Definitions, formulas, and simulated examples for plagiarism detection with FAIR metrics

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn prior work, we proposed a family of metrics as a tool to quantify adherence to or deviation from good citation practices in scholarly research and publishing. We called this family of metrics FAIR as an acronym for Fair Attribution to Indexed Reports and Fair Acknowledgment of Information Records, and introduced definitions for these metrics with counts of instances of correct or incorrect attribution or nonattribution in primary research articles with citations for previously published references. In the present work, we extend our FAIR family of metrics by introducing a collection of ratio‐based metrics to accompany the count‐based metrics described previously. We illustrate the mathematical properties of the ratio‐based metrics with various simulated examples in order to assess their suitability as a means of identifying papers under peer review as more or less likely to be suspicious for plagiarism. These FAIR metrics would alert peer reviewers to prioritize low‐scoring manuscripts for closer scrutiny. Finally, we outline our planned strategy for future validation of the FAIR metrics with an approach using both expert human analysts and automated algorithms for computerized analysis.