I'm interested in knowing how routine are plagiarism checks used by journals (especially, biomedical, medical ,nursing, meds ed) as a matter of their submission procedure? I'm trying to build an argument for our students who are all professionals (MDs, nurses, etc) that doing this for their final capstone or master's thesis only serves them when it is submitted for publication. I also argue that because many of these papers are protracted endeavors, it is easy to lose track of attributions unless you are scrupulous about notations.
Interesting question, I might say.
I think intellectual integrity or intellectual honesty, if you will, requires anyone submitting any piece of written work that is to be graded, adheres to the highest standards possible. So, whether a journal undertakes a plagiarism check or not, is beside the point. Everyone should at all times ensure that there is no plagiarism of any kind. Plagiarism to my mind includes pieces of text previously submitted, but now used anew in a another work. This is called self-plagiarism. A well-known professor at Dutch university who had received many honours was recently found by an investigation body of the university to which that well-known professor is/was affiliated, to have plagiarised. Does that not say what the notion of intellectual honesty is or should be?
Everyone pursuing a course of study at any institution should at all times endeavour to be scrupulously honest without exception – that should be an article of faith, the gold standard. If the values of truthfulness and intellectual honesty are side-lined because a piece of work is not being submitted to a journal, does it not raise questions about the quality and credibility of the data that has been collected in a study? How can we be sure that the data has not been massaged, or has not been polished, or that some data that does not resonate with the hypotheses have not been dropped as outliers, or “cleansed” or “tidied”? Self-policing, could be another term that one could use here. Recently, I have had to double-blind review a paper submitted to a journal but was not at all convinced about the results, apart from some issues with the methodology itself. I therefore asked the journal to obtain from the researcher(s) the raw data that they/s(he) had used so that I could quickly do a check. Incidentally, some journal do ask for, and do archive the data related to a paper submitted for publication; in the biological sciences, journals do ask for images.
I trust the above may be of some help to you in deciding what is best for your students, your institution, which I know to be a leading institution in the field of medicine...
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