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Refresher on Our Plagiarism Practices & Policies
Seeing that it's the beginning of a new year, we wanted to take this opportunity to review our plagiarism policies and practices with you. We are constantly on the lookout for content coming to the Studio that is not authentic. That is why we have our plagiarism checker that stands guard of our content like a TSA security scanner stand guard of carry-on luggage; not the body ones, we promise.
Once your article is submitted to the Studio, we run it through an online plagiarism checker to sort out work that may have duplicated or repurposed content in it. A handful of articles are flagged by this computer system, and a human (also known as an in-house Studio Editor) sorts it out. Very few articles of the articles flagged are found to be plagiarized.
Just as we do not want to be purchasing content that is a direct match to an already published article, we also do not want anyone taking or borrowing work we have purchased from you. To ensure no one is plagiarizing your content, we rerun all articles we have approved for the Studio through the plagiarism checker randomly throughout the year. This is to monitor content that has been taken from the Studio, and republished elsewhere on the web.
In our Terms of Use we clearly state in section 6.2, “…you may not reproduce, distribute, modify, publicly perform or display, or prepare derivative works of any Service Content, without prior written consent from Demand Studios or other third-party owner of the rights in that Service Content (if any). Demand Studios, its affiliates and licensors own all right, title and interest in and to the Service and the Service Content.”
Basically, you should not submit content with the intent to redistribute it elsewhere after publication.
However, if we do not approve your article, it is yours for the selling. In our Code of Ethics, we clearly state that any work that is not purchased from you by the Studio is yours to resell. Under the Title Ownership section (2.a), we state, “If your content has been rejected, you may republish your work on a different site, but you may not use our title. If we reject your work, the content you wrote belongs to you, but the title provided by Demand Studios is our intellectual property and may not be republished. “
If you have any questions on our plagiarism process you can check out our link here that goes through it in a more detailed way:
http://www.demandstudios.com/community/forum.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a2385d292-db38-4e0c-8199-ba98a40f2029Forum%3a5a3012ed-e3b5-41fd-8400-225d3d8fdcdfDiscussion%3a165ac7f9-b0fe-4b26-b1a0-e9bfaecb1f98
Once your article is submitted to the Studio, we run it through an online plagiarism checker to sort out work that may have duplicated or repurposed content in it. A handful of articles are flagged by this computer system, and a human (also known as an in-house Studio Editor) sorts it out. Very few articles of the articles flagged are found to be plagiarized.
Just as we do not want to be purchasing content that is a direct match to an already published article, we also do not want anyone taking or borrowing work we have purchased from you. To ensure no one is plagiarizing your content, we rerun all articles we have approved for the Studio through the plagiarism checker randomly throughout the year. This is to monitor content that has been taken from the Studio, and republished elsewhere on the web.
In our Terms of Use we clearly state in section 6.2, “…you may not reproduce, distribute, modify, publicly perform or display, or prepare derivative works of any Service Content, without prior written consent from Demand Studios or other third-party owner of the rights in that Service Content (if any). Demand Studios, its affiliates and licensors own all right, title and interest in and to the Service and the Service Content.”
Basically, you should not submit content with the intent to redistribute it elsewhere after publication.
However, if we do not approve your article, it is yours for the selling. In our Code of Ethics, we clearly state that any work that is not purchased from you by the Studio is yours to resell. Under the Title Ownership section (2.a), we state, “If your content has been rejected, you may republish your work on a different site, but you may not use our title. If we reject your work, the content you wrote belongs to you, but the title provided by Demand Studios is our intellectual property and may not be republished. “
If you have any questions on our plagiarism process you can check out our link here that goes through it in a more detailed way:
http://www.demandstudios.com/community/forum.html?plckForumPage=ForumDiscussion&plckDiscussionId=Cat%3a2385d292-db38-4e0c-8199-ba98a40f2029Forum%3a5a3012ed-e3b5-41fd-8400-225d3d8fdcdfDiscussion%3a165ac7f9-b0fe-4b26-b1a0-e9bfaecb1f98
Mary CatherineH
Jan 27, 7:43 AM
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MaryK
Jan 28, 12:06 PM
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JoshI
Jul 27, 2:52 PM
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Vanessa C
Aug 24, 6:25 AM
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BarryM4
Dec 15, 8:40 AM
Modifying content is made inevitable by the very DS system which then presumes to punish those who do it. My field of expertise is the electrical and electronic systems of recreational vehicles. There are only a certain number of ways to reword “Connect the blue wire to terminal two.’ Copying one’s own work in previous articles is plagiarism, and thus forbidden, so the information *has* to be reworded. Rewording *is* modifying content. Thus “You may not… modify… any Service Content” is a nonsense. You in fact may not take a second article on the same subject *without* modifying content.
That said, my second remark addresses SarahMetz’ comment in Plagiarism Appeal Practices: ‘If you grab two similar titles, the content from one article cannot be repurposed for the second. If you don’t think you can write two completely unique pieces, it’s best not to grab both titles.’
In a perfect world this would be a realizable instruction, but it ain’t a perfect world and this instruction also is a nonsense. Currently my filtered Find Assignments shows ‘Wire RV Plug to 30a Single Pole Breaker’ and ‘Connect 120v RV Plug to Single Pole 30a Breaker’ and several other lazy rewordings of the same title. If the titles offered by DS are blatant rewordings, then the product written *to* those titles will also be rewordings. Good, sound, accurate information presented differently, but inevitably a rewording nonetheless. Again, there are only a certain number of ways I can instruct the reader to “Connect the blue wire to terminal two.’
The current state of play, then, seems to be that I cannot write on subjects that I am an expert in. That, I would suggest, is not the best way to generate reliable content for the readers of a site like How To.
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