How to Protect Against Plagiarism
Authors often know about the risk of publishing online. Written content, once posted in the public domain on the web, is easily plagiarized. However, the risk of losing track and control of work during review is less well known. Here is how you can protect your work between when it is written and when it is formally published, formally called the review stage.
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Instructions
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Never post a whole work in an open forum for review. Post a whole chapter at most at a single time and in a single location.
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If publishing work for group review, use private or closed chat rooms. They may be invitation only chat rooms or part of a paid membership website. This reduces the pool of potential plagiarizers and provides more control over viewing permissions.
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If sending a manuscript or paper for review, either by a professional editor or a pre-publication book review firm, send the content in a password protected file. For extra security, send the password in a separate email to the intended recipient. This reduces the risk of someone intercepting, downloading, and then copying the work in part or in full.
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Run sections of your work through plagiarism checking websites. This helps authors check for possible plagiarism against their own work, accidental similarity to the work of others, and can help find unattributed citation and quoting of your own work by others.
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Always have your full name associated to the document in the "by" line, as well as embedded in the header and/or footer of the documents sent. Where possible, include a signature line embedded in the document.
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Authors should also be careful in sending print books to reviewers. Many people pose as reviewers, receive copies at the author's expense, and then sell the books to book stores or on their own websites. This wastes the author's time and money, as well as creates an unintended source of "used" books for sale as a new work is becoming available. Limit advance copies and review copies to proven reviewers and marketers.
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Tips & Warnings
If written content published in the public domain, even if on the author's own blog, the exclusive rights cannot be sold to another party.
