More Obstacles for the Graduate Student Author: Open Access ETDs Trigger Plagiarism Detectors

Abstract:  Supporting graduate students as authors is one of the many services we provide at the University Library, University of Saskatchewan (USask). Graduate students often submit articles to journals based on content from their electronic theses or dissertations (ETDs). Recently, we have noticed an increase in the number of such article submissions being flagged for possible rejection on “plagiarism” or “prior publication” grounds. We suspect this may be because plagiarism detection software is increasingly being integrated into publishers’ article submission systems. This software is triggered by the existence of the student’s open access (OA) ETD in our institutional repository. This happens despite OA ETD inclusion in repositories being a common practice and despite journal policies often allowing submission of articles based on ETDs. We review common practices and guidelines around publishing of ETD content, two recent cases of journals initially rejecting such submissions by graduate student authors of our institution, and our reflections on this issue and how to address it.