ScienceDaily - no duplicate penalty for content syndication?

[Automotive site]

Its actually a very good site, one of the best on the web in my opinion. However, given that Google has come down hard on sites with duplicate content or near duplicate content, a site like ScienceDaily reproduces significant amount of content, albeit with permission or those content that already have reprint rights.

Does a site like ScienceDaily geta apss from Google because it is a highly authoritative site and at the same time, educational.

[TheMadScientist]

But lately, content has been my focus.

That's the best way IMO.

I would say one of the things that's helped me the most over the years is doing what I suggested as far as 'what' and some of 'how' goes above, then focusing on content ... Once you have the 'base' for what they do and an understanding of how that has to happen, you can really focus on content and you can also apply the 'working ideas' you have of how they have to do things to that content.

EG Some people say they don't count <h1>s differently or score them higher and others say they do and I think personally to prevent manipulation of a single element the best way is to score things that 'work together' higher, so if it was me I think I would score a page where the title, description, h1 and content on the page 'work together' higher than an essentially the same page with a title, but no description or h1 and only paragraphs on the page. IOW If it was me I would not 'score an element' but rather a 'collection of elements'...

So while you might not be able to rank directly for words only in your description, I think I would take the description into account and if it was 'complimentary' to the content of the page that would be a +1, where if it was different it might not subtract from the score or rank for it's content independently.

I hope what I'm trying to say makes sense to someone besides me. lol.