Plagiarism, Lack Of Diversity; Humanities Journal Editors Criticize Humanities Academia

Humanities academics have so long signaled toward progressivism - even when progressives were eugenicists - that it is harm to imagine that they wouldn't become more inclusive without having it called out, but perhaps that is the nature of truly lacking inclusivity. You don't know you are missing something if everyone tells you that you're not. Like intolerance for plagiarism.

Humanities academics have so long signaled toward progressivism - even when progressives were eugenicists - that it is harm to imagine that they wouldn't become more inclusive without having it called out, but perhaps that is the nature of truly lacking inclusivity. 

You don't know you are missing something if everyone tells you that you're not. Like intolerance for plagiarism.

A new analysis finds that over half of humanities journal editors have encountered outright plagiarism. If it's that systemic it means academics believe everyone does it so it's no problem. But plagiarism and exclusivity are also a problem in the arts and the so-called social sciences, finds the Committee on Publication Ethics.

We might have to give them a pass on inclusivity. If you are a journal about literature, for example, how can you allow bad english prose from other cultures without changing it so much you are insulting the author? Creating a meritocracy exclusively among people great with one language is not really a meritocracy. 

The survey results from over 650 journal editors found:

64 percent of respondents encountered issues addressing language and writing quality barriers that prevent the ability to be more inclusive in publishing. 

58 percent reported detecting plagiarism as the most serious issue they dealt with, followed by fraudulent submissions (44%) and data or image fabrication (31%).

 Recognizing and dealing with bias in peer reviewer comments was an issue encountered by 55
percent
of journal editors.

Unsurprisingly, the editors were less confident in spotting data and/or image fabrication issues (24 percent), and intellectual property and copyright issues (21 percent).

There were no significant differences in the concerns reported by journal editors from different subject areas, or regionally, suggesting that many of the issues are experienced across multiple disciplines within the arts, humanities and social sciences. 

Science certainly has many of the same issues and the issue may be even more of a concern there than in the humanities. If someone fakes a paper on literary criticism, the world will not change, but if a Berkeley professor like Tyrone Hayes fabricates data on a weedkiller hurting frogs, that gets EPA SAPs called, and companies get sued. Even if no one ever actually sees how he created his screenshots.

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