How do we handle plagiarism in the lit mag community?
Welcome to our weekend conversation!
A message came from a reader this past week. M. wrote:
I think there may be a future post that you could do about how to deal with writers who plagiarize -- do you permanently blacklist them? do you make them jump through extra hoops? do they get put in "time out"?
A very interesting subject. No one likes or supports plagiarism. But what frameworks are in place for lit mag editors and writers to handle it?
M’s message came on the heels of an editor sharing news about a writer who had been plagiarizing work.
On Bluesky, the Editor of Nightmare Magazine and Lightspeed posted:
Apparently, this person has published plagiarized work in many venues:
From the Editor of Bending Genres:
From the Editor of Friends Journal:
From Utopia SF Magazine:
From ONE ART:
From The Hudson Review (regarding other magazines):
From fellow poets:
From the writers whose work was stolen:
And finally, some advice from the Editors of Identity Theory:
All this led me to wonder: How do lit mags check for plagiarism? And when/under what conditions should they?
Should editors really google a few lines of every work they wish to accept before publication, just in case?
Or should they generally trust contributors, leaving it up to readers to spot stolen work?
Also:
Do editors have clear parameters in place regarding what constitutes plagiarism versus what is fair use? Have they had these conversations internally? Should they?
And going back to M.’s questions, what sort of penalty is sufficient for someone who has plagiarized work?
If a writer has been caught plagiarizing, should they be banned from ever publishing anything again?
What if the writer makes a public statement, apologizes to the writers whose work was stolen, apologizes to the journals the writer deceived, and then commits to writing original work going forward? Can they continue publishing new work?
In schools and colleges, there are obviously clear rules as to how plagiarism will be dealt with. Not so in the world of lit mags, where each editor may approach the situation differently.
Let’s talk about it.
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