Combating plagiarism and other forms of unethical publishing

Purpose

Within this program, we study different forms of inappropriate publishing practices and monitor their frequency in journals published in the region of Southeast Europe. For detecting plagiarism we use exclusively professional systems intended for research papers (iThenticate), and for the results verification exclusively our in-house tools (Verifier). Also, we register cases of fabrication and falsification of papers and take steps to which we are bound by membership of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). We are developing our own method of detecting misconduct. In particular, we are focused on the development of tools for the detection of manipulative citation practices, based on the Text and citation analysis. The ultimate goal of these efforts is to protect the public interest, but primarily to protect the integrity of our client journals.

Activities

Within the program, the following activities are conducted regularly:

• Studying ethical publishing standards, guides and procedures.
• Monitoring the typical forms and cases of unethical publishing in the world.
• Participating in the activities of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and implementing its recommendations in CEES's journal evaluation system.
• Systematic assessment of incidence of plagiarism in all Serbian national journals and in a sample of journals published in the SEE region.
• The action research of cases of grave violations of ethical publishing standards.
• Development of methods and tools to detect plagiarism and manipulative citation practices, based on text and citation analysis.