Newly available software allows WSU researchers and scholarly writers to find out in mere minutes if instances of improper attribution might be present in their documents, thus allowing them to make necessary tweaks before submitting works for publication.
(Note that funding agencies, impact factor journals, and other universities are already using the same product on their end to similarly screen your materials.)
Signups are now open for faculty and graduate students who wish to access for free the popular cloud-based software—iThenticate. It checks their uploaded documents against a massive database that contains millions of works in journals and popular media such as newspapers and encyclopedias; billions of webpages; and more than 300,000 theses and dissertations via ProQuest.
Provost and Executive Vice President Daniel J. Bernardo introduced iThenticate to WSU Nov. 6. He noted that when the Faculty Senate leadership approached him in 2013 about plagiarism-prevention software, he felt such tools would offer a great opportunity to use technology to support a culture of academic integrity and high standards of writing and research.
You can read more about the software, online tools available to learn to use it, and WSU’s one-year pilot program at https://vpue.wsu.edu/iThenticate.
To register to access iThenticate, send an email with the subject line “iThenticate” to Mary Wack, vice provost for undergraduate education, at mwack@wsu.edu. Be sure to include your name, email address, department, college, and campus information.
