Checking Submissions Against Your School's Own Back Issues

A plagiarism check is only as good as what it compares against. If your school's own past journal issues are not in that comparison, an article recycled from them can come back with a clean similarity score. Keep your back issues where your checker can see them, and check every new submission against them.

Most similarity checkers compare a paper with the public web and with whatever published collections they can reach. A school journal that was printed, filed in the library and saved to a shared drive is often in neither. This article explains why that gap matters to research offices and journal editors, and how Veritext, the originality platform we built ourselves, closes it.

The short answer

Your own archive is one of the most likely places for recycled work to come from, and one of the least likely places for a generic checker to look. Collect your past issues in one place, add them to the comparison, and make the check part of how every new submission is received.

Why your own back issues are the blind spot

Think about where a student or researcher looking for a shortcut would go first. Not a famous international journal, where copied work would stand out. More often it is an older article from the same institution, on a local topic, written for the same kind of reader. That material is close at hand and unlikely to be recognised by a new editor or reviewer.

It is also the material a web-based checker is least likely to have. Many school and college journals were never put online, or only as scanned copies that cannot be read as text. Others sit on a website that search tools rarely index. So a similarity report can come back low, not because the work is original, but because the source was never in the comparison.

What a research office can do about it

• Gather the archive. List every issue of the journal and where each one is kept: print, PDF, Word file or website.
• Get readable files. A scanned page is a picture, not text. Use the original Word or PDF files where they exist.
• Put the archive in the comparison. A checker can only flag a match against material it can see.
• Check on receipt, not just before printing. A problem found when a manuscript arrives is a conversation with the author, not a retraction.
• Keep adding issues. Each new issue should join the archive as soon as it is published.

How Veritext journal folders help

Veritext's journal folders let a research office keep its own past issues in one place and check every new submission against them. That comparison runs alongside Veritext's checks against published research and the web, so one report covers your archive and the wider literature together.

Checks are unmetered under a fair-use policy, with no per-student fee, so a research office can check drafts and resubmissions as often as the editorial process needs. Papers are never sold, shared or used to train AI.

Veritext also checks the references in a paper and flags the ones it cannot match to a published record. Our article on AI-invented references covers that feature.

Keep the judgement with people

A match against a past issue is not automatically misconduct. An author may be building on their own earlier article, quoting it with credit, or publishing an extended version with the editor's agreement. The report shows where the text overlaps. The editor decides what it means, and the fair first step is to ask the author.

Frequently asked questions

Why would a similarity check miss text from our own journal?

Because it can only compare against material it can see. If your past issues were never put online as readable text, they are probably not in a generic checker's comparison.

Does a match against a past issue mean the author copied?

Not necessarily. It could be properly credited quotation, the author's own earlier work, or an agreed extended version. Ask the author before drawing conclusions.

Are our journal files shared with other schools?

No. Papers are never sold, shared or used to train AI.

Can we try journal folders in the free demo?

The free demo shows the similarity report only. Ask us for a walkthrough of the full platform, including journal folders.

Where to start

1. List your journal's issues and where each one is stored.
2. Collect readable files for as many as you can.
3. Set up a journal folder and add the archive.
4. Check every new submission on receipt, against your archive and the wider literature.
5. Add each new issue once it is published.
6. Write it into your editorial policy, including how matches are reviewed.

Onprem2Cloud IT Solutions Co. is a Microsoft CSP partner based in Muntinlupa City, Metro Manila. See the Veritext product page, our other in-house software on the software page, or contact us for a walkthrough.