Protecting Your Work from Plagiarism—

It’s Easier (and More Important) than You Think

By Nancy Baggett

It’s an unpleasant fact, but if you’re a culinary blogger, recipe developer, or food photographer, your work will likely be plagiarized at some point.  If you’ve been posting on the Internet or publishing in other venues for very long, you’re probably already a victim. Maybe more than once, possibly even a lot!

The reason? Creating recipes, food pics, and text take time, talent, plus money for ingredients and props, so it’s much easier for unscrupulous folks to plunder somebody else’s material than to produce their own.  Especially when it can be snatched with a couple of mouse clicks, and the chances of getting caught seem slim. (Actually, the chances of being caught can be fairly high; read on.)

My initial awareness of publishing’s dark side came years ago when a friend noticed a recipe from my very first cookbook in a large national publication. Neither my name nor the book title appeared; the recipe was attributed to a caterer. In fact, the caterer had copied my recipe exactly, but hadn’t mentioned this when she submitted it. Despite anguished pleading from me and my editor, the publication never issued a correction. (Other incidents have occurred over the years since, but perhaps because I was a virgin author that first rape was the most devastating and painful ever!)

I discovered the latest misuse of my material through a daily Google Alert, which, like many cookbook authors and some bloggers, I run to keep tabs on who’s saying what about my work. A routine search on my name sent me to an unfamiliar site where I found a food-recipe feature I’d written for somebody else. Another writer’s by-line appeared on my barely-altered story, though the recipe was credited to me.

My immediate huffy e-mail to the editor posting the feature elicited a prompt, very solicitous apology, corrected by-line, plus a fascinating explanation: She’d bought rights to use and customize the piece “however she wished,” from the publication I’d originally written it for, even though we’d had no agreement that my by-line could be removed or that the piece could be resold. A second quick e-mail to the real offending party uncovered that the story had been “inadvertently” bundled with material the publication did have the right to resell. Okay, that sounded plausible….

I’d already been thinking about how to better protect my work posted on-line, but the recent Cook’s Source case of blatant intellectual property theft from dozens of sites and authors (well over 100 stories from websites ranging from huge and high-profile to little known) pushed me into action. It turns out there are a number of free, very helpful anti-plagiarism software tools out there. Plus, they are so effective and easy to use that I feel that any writer, recipe developer, or photographer who isn’t eager to give away his or her work should run them regularly or at least now and then.

Here are four good, free programs that I plan to run every week or so. The first, called copyscape, checks for any Internet matches to material it finds in your inputted URL. The next two tools are dedicated text checkers, which professors and teachers have been using to vet students’ papers for years. These two will be especially handy for those who don’t have their own website. The third, a photo checker, is new but looks promising, especially if your site is heavily trafficked and is known for great pics. (For shots that tie into recipes, merely hunting for the associated recipe may work better.)

http://www.copyscape.com/ I’m grateful to Casey at http://www.goodfoodstories.com/ for putting me on to this great, completely free piece of anti-plagiarism software. Just paste in your URL page, and copyscape immediately searches the blogosphere for matches to your content. Copyscape even has “Protected by Copyscape” banners and warning notices you can paste on your website to ward off poachers.

http://www.dustball.com/cs/plagiarism.checker/ Use this for searches of a full article or large chunks of text. I pasted in a recipe for my High Summer Blackberry-Plum Sorbet, which is shown in the photos here. Within seconds, the checker found the recipe on my website; it also directed me to another site hosted by a pastry chef blogger. The author had definitely not copied any of my material, but she did happen to use some similar directions and ingredients that triggered the “match.” Which suggests that this detector will find even text extensively altered to cover a “borrower’s” tracks.

http://www.plagiarismchecker.com/ This software check excerpts of up to 32 words that are entered into a small field. (It will automatically lop off extra words, so you don’t need to count them.) It then searches and provides a list of potential matches to follow up and evaluate. It offers the option of delivering in the form of regular Google Alerts, if desired.

http://www.tineye.com/ Professional photographers often say that the only way to keep images from being plagiarized on the Internet is never to post them! The only other solution usually suggested is to add watermarks or property stamps, which while deterring poachers, also greatly detract from the visual appeal of the pics. But now there’s some new, free software that can search for image matches, and it will likely become more and more effective as its grows. It’s easy to use; just upload your pic and click “start.” (It didn’t find the two sorbet images I inputted.)

You’ll have to assess for yourself how well these programs perform, but don’t be surprised if you get some hits. Matthew Rowley, http://matthew-rowley.blogspot.com/ a freelance writer colleague I  occasionally exchange info with on Facebook, did a quick search using these checker tools and was astonished to discover he’d been filling what amounted to a columnist’s role on someone else’s website! His lively, by-lined stories had been appearing regularly for some time, though he’d never given permission for his work to be reused and, of course, hadn’t received any compensation for being an important content provider. (He planned to follow up but hasn’t gotten back to me on what happened next.)

It would be not only interesting but helpful to the entire food blogger-writer-developer-photographer community, if after doing your own plagiarism search (and checking to verify the misuse) you’d share your results here. If we could make a habit of exchanging such info on Food Blog Forum, we’d take a big step towards stopping poachers from repeatedly snatching and profiting from our creativity and hard work. Maybe just knowing that we are now actively looking for them and alerting one another would discourage the more risk-averse potential plagiarizers from pursuing the Cook’s Source path.  ###

Nancy Baggett is an award-winning cookbook author and long-time food writer with 16 cookbooks and hundreds of food articles to her credit. She blogs at Kitchen Lane.