Pages

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Please Don't Plagiarize more than 30% of your paper

"In order to ensure the quality of the article, English grammar and writing must be Specification, and the copy rate can not be more than 30%(include references ), and the article must be strictly typesetting in accordance with the template , otherwise the article will not be published, please respect the academic ethics!" (Quote from a conference CFP)


Got this spam conference email recently. It was hosted in Singapore but the way the CFP was written suggests that the conference is being run by a group from Mainland China.

Of interest to me was that the Chinese version uses a word for "copy" that is also translatable as "plagiarism" (at least according to Google Translate!).  I point this out not to make fun (though it does seem kind of funny at first), but to suggest what kind of everyday, normal practices are likely in place for the people involved with this conference. There seems to be an understanding that there will be a certain degree of "copying" involved in an academic paper, yet the editors are also concerned about "academic ethics." If I had more time I could try to say more about this, but for now I just think it's (wait for it) interesting.