CrossCheck powered by iThenticate is an initiative started by CrossRef to help its members actively engage in efforts to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism. Although there are several plagiarism screening tools already available, they are not well-suited to filtering academic content simply because they haven't had access to the relevant full-text literature to screen against. CrossCheck changes this by creating and continuously growing a database of current and archival scholarly literature.

This database is one of two parts that make up the CrossCheck service. The second part is the iThenticate tool, which compares authored work against the content in the database and highlight matching or similar text for further editorial review.

Upcoming CrossCheck Webinars and Demos

Introduction to CrossCheck Webinar

Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 3:00 pm (London)

Date: Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 4:00 pm (London)

Date: Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 4:00 pm (London)

Date: Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 4:00 pm (London)

Please join us to learn about our innovative plagiarism screening service and how it can add value to your publishing program. Sign up here for an informal 20 minute presentation followed by plenty of time for questions.

CrossCheck iThenticate Demo

Date: Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 3:00 pm (London)

For a more detailed tour of the iThenticate document checking software that is central to CrossCheck, please join one of our upcoming demos. This hour long session will guide you through the iThenticate interface and is ideal if you are considering the service, or if you have already signed up and want to know more about the features available to you.

To learn more or to join the CrossCheck iThenticate demo please register here.

CrossCheck Members

See a list of current CrossCheck Members or download a list of titles included in the CrossCheck database.

How does it work?

To participate in CrossCheck publishers must first allow their content to be indexed and included in the CrossCheck database. All CrossRef members are encouraged to contribute to the database regardless of whether they decide to check submissions, as participation will benefit the CrossCheck community and will help prevent other publishers from unknowingly re-publishing your content.

Step two is to begin checking authored works against the database. This is done through a web-based tool by uploading a document and running a similarity check against the CrossCheck database, and optionally the wider internet. The system returns a set of results listing documents that share a significant degree of textual overlap with the target document. The results are presented in order of similarity with an indicator that shows the degree of overlap with the document being checked. This result set is called an "originality report" and this originality report must be analyzed by somebody with editorial expertise in order to detect instances of plagiarism.

Finally, we would encourage all participating publishers to display the CrossCheck logo on their websites and in their published documents to show their participation and to help deter would-be plagiarists from copying your content.

CrossCheck Logos

To join CrossCheck you must first be a CrossRef member.  If you are already a CrossRef member you can join by filling in an application form and signing a license agreement, and emailing both documents to crosscheck@iparadigms.com.  Please keep in mind when reviewing these agreements that they have been carefully vetted by CrossRef staff and several member publishers.  Although you have the option of negotiating the terms of the agreement with our technology partner iParadigms, we believe you will find the terms favourable and hope that further negotiations are not necessary.

If you are interested in finding out more about CrossCheck before applying please email crosscheck_info@crossref.org and we will be happy to answer any questions you may have.  You may also find the Frequently Asked Questions further down this page useful.

What does it cost?

CrossCheck fees are in two parts: a per-document checking fee and an annual administrative fee.  Per-document checking fees are paid directly to iParadigms; these fees are significantly less than those charged by iParadigms outside of the CrossCheck initiative, and volume discounts also apply.  The annual administrative fee is paid to CrossRef and is set at 20% of your CrossRef annual membership fee.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need to be a CrossRef member to join CrossCheck?

Yes, the CrossCheck service is only available to members who are depositing DOIs with CrossRef.

What technology are you using to provide this service?

CrossRef has partnered with leading plagiarism screening systems vendor iParadigms to create the CrossCheck database and to use their iThenticate tool for checking documents against the database. As a CrossCheck member you will need to sign a license with iParadigms to use their system; this license has been fully reviewed and approved by CrossRef and several of its member publishers and should not require any additional negotiation.

Why shouldn't I just work with iParadigms directly?

There are a number of benefits available to CrossCheck members that you would not be able to take advantage of by working solely with iParadigms:

• CrossCheck members can see the full text of articles that match or partially match documents submitted for checking, whereas iParadigms customers can only see see twelve lines of text above and below the matching text.

• CrossCheck members have unlimited user accounts while a basic iThenticate account comes with two user accounts and each extra user is an additional charge.
• CrossCheck members' fees for checking documents are deeply discounted as compared to the fees charged by iParadigms directly
• Only CrossCheck members can display CrossCheck logos on their content and websites to show their participation in the project and deter potential plagiarists.

How will my content be indexed?

Your content will be crawled in much the same way that a search engine would index your full text, but rather than crawling your entire site the CrossCheck crawler uses a site map of deposited DOIs to locate content and start crawling at your DOI landing page, or directly at the full text if you have registered "as-crawled" URLs with CrossRef. Upon arrival at the DOI landing page the crawler needs to be redirected to full text. Further information on how to do this can be found on the CrossCheck Indexing page.
If you have a very large amount of content to be indexed it may be possible to arrange for an FTP upload in place of crawling; please contact us for further information.

How do I check a document for possible plagiarism?

To check a document for possible plagiarism you simply upload the document using the web-based iThenticate tool and choose whether to check it against just the CrossCheck database, or additionally iThenticate's database of other proprietary content and/or the open web. The system will then produce a "similarity report". This report shows the percent of the document that matches other content in the database, where that content comes from, and the matching content itself; information that a human can then use to make a judgement on whether there has in fact been a case of plagiarism. Uploading a document to iThenticate does not add the document to the CrossCheck database, and you can delete the document from the system upon completion of the similarity screening.

A CrossCheck user manual (PDF 3.7MB) is also available to download.

What is the definition of a "document"?

Documents submitted for checking are defined to be article or chapter length works of no more than 50 pages. (Note: documents submitted for checking do not get stored or included in the database and can be deleted after checking via the iThenticate interface).

How does CrossCheck work with manuscript tracking systems?