Plagiary

A New Scholarly Journal

Over the past decade, cross-disciplinary interest in plagiarism and other forms of fraud as a focus of study has resulted from various discourse communities having to deal with serious violations of scholarship norms. Plagiarism, falsification of data, and fabrications have tainted the reputations of individuals, institutions, and professions as a whole.

To bring together the various strands of scholarship which already exist on the subject, and to create a forum for discussion across disciplinary boundaries, the new scholarly journal Plagiary exists. Devoted specifically to the scholarly, cross-disciplinary study of plagiary and related behaviors across the disciplines, articles in Plagiary address the issue of fraudulent contributions to disciplinary discourse communities and the potential (and actual) corruption of the professional literature and other genres of discourse as a result of such derivative and/or fraudulent "contributions" to discoursal interchange.

Yet along with such fraudulent representations which seem to be quite common across various discourse communities, there are also legimate means of derivative expression, and studies which analyze such topics as mimicry, parody, pastiche and the like are welcome for publications consideration.

Launch Date: January 2006. Papers are being accepted for publications consideration on an ongoing basis to be published in Plagiary through the University of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office.

Format: As a publication of the University of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO), the journal contents are distributed and preserved on a non-exclusive basis by the University of Michigan Library. And as part of the library collection, the journal falls under the preservation scope of a major research institution thus guaranteeing long term preservation of the journal content in perpetuity.

From the SPO website:

The Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library provides electronic publishing services to the academic community as an alternative to commercial publication . . . Among our core principles in publication are:

• retention of all intellectual property rights by authors or editors (non-exclusive right of SPO to distribute content)
  
• long term preservation of the electronic publication (the publication becomes part of the University Library's collection and is therefore part of its preservation scope)
  
• a preference for publishing open access journals
  

Advance online copies of articles from Plagiary will also be available online at the journal homepage with links to the the full text of articles in Adobe .pdf format. A hardcopy version will be available at the end of each year for individual or institutional purchase (subscription information).

Frequency of Publication: Ongoing as papers are reviewed and recommended for publication by referees. Annual publication of hardcopy version at the end of each calendar year (i.e. Plagiary 2006, Plagiary 2007 . . . ).

Audience: Professionals across disciplines of inquiry and all those interested in plagiarism-related phenomena, fabrication, and falsification along with legitimate means of derivative expression such as parody, pastiche, mimicry and the like.