The Use of Innovative Tools in the Editorial Process of Scientific Journals of Ukraine

Abstract

Rapid progress in the field of publishing scientific journals, on the one hand, facilitates all editorial processes, and on the other hand, increases the risks of losing the uniqueness of a scientific article. The growing need of scientific journals for supporting tools that would, on the one hand, protect journal editions from unscrupulous authors who resort to the practice of scientific plagiarism, and on the other hand, instill in authors a sense of responsibility for the texts they send. The purpose is to reveal the problems of using text similarity scanners - plagiarism checking services in the editorial process of scientific journals of Ukraine, to verify by empirical research the theoretical hypothesis about the existence of certain types of practices of academic plagiarism in the Ukrainian scientific environment. Survey of editors of professional editions of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine has been conducted using the CAWI method with the help of the Google forms functionality. The sample consisted of 99 experts (editors of category “A” journals – 8%; editors of category “B” journals – 92%), who represented the general population on the basis of “journal category”, which ensured the validity of the results. The opinion of the editors of scientific journals on the use of text similarity scanners in the editorial process has been determined. The most widely used services are Unicheck and Antiplagiat, which, according to respondents, most simply and concretely solve the problem of plagiarism and reuse of text. It has been identified that publishing houses that publish journals with international distribution and those indexed by the scientometric platforms Scopus and WoS (category “A” according to the national classification) mostly use similarity scanners. Publishing houses operating only within Ukraine, the journals of which are not represented in prestigious scientometric platforms, often ignore plagiarism detection software altogether and rely solely on the opinion of reviewers and editors. It is shown that the practice of using text similarity scanners, although entrenched in the Ukrainian scientific and publishing space, is still not widespread enough and does not cover the vast majority of scientific journals that rely only on traditional forms of reviewing scientific texts.

Use of Digital Tools for Checking Uniqueness by Students and Academic Staff of the Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University: Problems and Solutions

“…The research was conducted through a survey (G Suite service) with pre-defined questions (14) among the representatives of all institutes/departments (10) of the university. The respondents (a total of 1,171) were 529 students, 114 master's students, 84 postgraduates, 396 academic staff and 48 researchers of the university.…”

“…The topic of plagiarism check is not new for the co-authors of this article. Thus, in particular, Opryshko et al [14] researched the use of text match scanners in the editorial process of Ukrainian scientific journals. The results showed that publishing houses that publish journals with international distribution and those indexed by the scientometric platforms Scopus and WoS (category "A" according to the national classification of Ukraine) mostly use similarity scanners.…”

“…Publishing houses operating only within Ukraine, the journals of which are not represented in prestigious scientometric platforms, often ignore plagiarism detection software altogether and rely solely on the opinion of reviewers and edit ors. It is shown that the practice of using text similarity scanners, although entrenched in the Ukrainian scientific and publishing space, is still not widespread enough and does not cover the vast majority of scientific journals that rely only on traditi onal forms of reviewing scientific texts [14].…”