How prevalent are plagiarized submissions? Global survey of editors

Most analyses of plagiarism focus on published content and do not report on the prevalence of plagiarism in submitted articles. Fears over large‐scale plagiarism, particularly in articles submitted by authors for whom English is a second language, have only been investigated in small publishing communities or using duplication‐checking analysis, which does not separate legitimate from unacceptable duplication. This research surveyed journal editors from around the world to ascertain recent (past year) experiences of plagiarized and/or duplicated submissions. We then compared their experiences to their assumptions about global levels of plagiarism. The survey received 372 responses, including 119 from Asian editors, 112 from European editors, and 57 from editors in North America. The respondents estimated that c.15% of all submissions contained plagiarized or duplicated content, although their own experiences were in the range of 2–5% of submissions. Of the respondents, 42% reported no incidence of plagiarized or duplicated submissions in the past year. Asian editors experienced the highest levels of plagiarized/duplicated content, although most of the problem articles were resolved, indicating that most of the identified duplication constituted relatively minor problems, rather than fraudulent plagiarism.     

What influences the regional diversity of reviewers: A study of medical and agricultural/biological sciences journals

There is evidence of a geographical imbalance of reviewers, leading to concerns about the sustainability of peer review to ensure high‐quality, timely publications. This research evaluated articles submitted during 2016 to 149 Wiley‐owned journals in two disciplines: medicine (112 journals), and agricultural and biological sciences (37). We compared the reviewer location with the location of the author and the Editor‐in‐Chief, the size and rank of the journal, and whether the journal had difficulty in obtaining reviews. We found that reviewers mostly came from the USA, but there was a correlation between the reviewer location and the country and region of the Editor‐in‐Chief and that of the corresponding author. Reviewers were also more likely to accept invitations to review articles when the corresponding author was from their region and were more likely to be positive about such articles. We found no difference between journals of different disciplines and of different rank or size or difficulty in obtaining reviews.     

Space matters: framing the New Zealand learning landscape

Learning Environments Research - Significant funding is devoted across the world to transforming traditional classrooms into flexible learning environments. These efforts are often...     

Book reviews

The Information Diet: A Case for Conscious Consumption Clay Johnson O'Reilly, 2011, 150pp. ISBN 978‐1‐449‐30468‐3, £11.20 hbk www.informationdiet.com     

Connecting the dots: Theorizing and mapping learning entanglement through archaeology and design

Designing for digitally enhanced learning has increased in complexity. In response, this paper calls for a reconceptualization of technology—as the reconfiguring of space, place, materials, time and social relations—enrolled and refashioned in emergent learning activity. Such reconceptualization requires analytical tools, methods and processes to map heterogeneous assemblages of people, tools and tasks. Educational researchers and designers are in need of approaches and theories that move beyond deterministic accounts about the utility of individual learning technologies, to connect theory, research and practice. Our research shows that in learning to distinguish between elements that are open to alteration through design and those that are not, educational designers gain deeper insights into the flows of matter, information and humans characteristic of productive networked learning environments. And this, in turn, gives rise to valued qualities of emergent learning activity in alignment with current theories about learning. In this paper, we present a series of methods adapted from archaeology and design, illustrating their power in tracing the complex webs of dependence characteristic of productive learning entanglement, with the aim of supporting future design for learning.     

E‐journals: developing country access survey

Concern over the information gap between developed and developing countries has led to a number of initiatives to promote access to information, but is there a potential of overlapping and conflicting information being given to the recipients? And what are publishers' attitudes towards the supply of their content at greatly reduced prices, or for free? During 2002 INASP was commissioned to undertake a survey to identify publishers' activities and opinions in this area. The survey found that the majority of respondents were involved in one or more access programmes and there was a willingness from both the commercial and the non‐commercial sector to provide their information in this way.     

Discourses of plagiarism: moralist,proceduralist, developmental and inter-textual approaches

This paper reconstructs prevalent academic discourses of student plagiarism: moralism, proceduralism, development, and writing/inter-textuality. It approaches the discourses from three aspects: intention, interpretation and the nature of the academic community. It argues that the assumptions of the moralistic approach regarding suspect intention, the transparency of interpretation, and the homogeneous nature of the academic community are in effect sustained by discourses of proceduralism and development. This results, first, in the simplistic rendition of student identities as honest/dishonest, and, second, in the proposal of or acquiescence to the triad of prevention, detection and punishment. The paper concludes that radical re-conceptualization of plagiarism may only be discovered in the discourse of inter-textuality where intention, interpretation and the academic community are construed as social practices concerning the negotiation of various identities and values – those of students as well as those of academics.     

Equestrian

Sagittal plane SVHS video recordings (50 Hz) were made of horses jumping the wall at an international Puissance competition. Video sequences were manually digitized and six kinematic variables at take‐off were analyzed. Nine horses started the competition with the fence height at 1.80 m, and two horses attempted the fence in the fifth and final round with the fence height at 2.27 m. For successful performances, fence height was correlated with the following take‐off variables: vertical velocity of the centre of mass (r = 0.45, p = 0.03); height of centre of mass (r = 0.44, p = 0.04); distance of centre of mass from fence (r = 0.46, p = 0.03); and distance from leading hind limb to centre of mass (r = ‐0.61, p < 0.01). These results indicated that body position at take‐off is the most important aspect when jumping high fences. This is the first known study that has examined horses jumping over a Puissance wall. The results should help horse riders and trainers improve performance in Puissance jumping horses, and perhaps help in the early selection of horses with a talent for jumping high fences.