We here at The Scientist do our best to keep an eye out for instances of scientific misconduct and publishing irregularities. In the past we've not only reported on Woo-suk Hwang's fraudulent human cloning research, but we've brought you news of other misconduct, such as the Egyptian paleontologist who allegedly plagiarized previously published photos.

We may have a lot less scandal to report on in the near future, given last week's announcement by the Committee on Publication Ethics of the June launch of a new plagiarism detection service called CrossCheck. According to a story to appear tomorrow (Apr 12) in the British Medical Journal, scientific journal editors can sign up for CrossCheck, which is being offered by citation linking network CrossRef, to automatically check manuscripts they receive against a database of already published work.

Already, eight publishers - including Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, the BMJ Group, Taylor and Francis, and the New England Journal of Medicine - have agreed to sign on to the service, which will compare "text fingerprints" from manuscripts to other works in the database. If the service works, editors might catch plagiarism before publishing papers.

The service will not, however, catch instances of image fraud, such as the plagiarism allegedly perpetrated by Mostafa Mansour Imam, the Egyptian paleontologist, and at least one of Hwang's missteps.

So maybe The Scientist will still have some misconduct fodder for our news stories.