Scientific Journals and Plagarism

[TruthSeeker]

This is an update of sorts of this thread about a student who plagarized my work

Brief summary: grad student published what was supposed to be a multi-authored paper as solely his own.

The University has decided to go forward with this as academic fraud - plagarism and has asked me what I would like to have happen vis a vis the journal.

My question: what is a reasonable request?

Ideally, the journal would republish the article with the correct authors but I can't imagine that makes sense from the journal's point of view.

At the least, they could publish a statement acknowledging the correct authorship but my concern there is that it will continue to appear without the correct authorship on medline/pubmed.

Is there a third more moderate option that others have seen that I might be able to propose?

Thanks so much.

 

[exarch]

I think the question is: Would you be satisfied with anything less than a reprint of the story with the correct authors?

You just need to take a quick browse through the Snopes.com archives to realise just how many urban legends are propagated because they (mistakenly) came from a reputable source like a press agency, a newspaper or a sciencific journal. And those aren't even true.
If they don't reprint it, it will probably be considered as the students own work (depending ofcourse on how many people reference that journal).

 

[Dr. Imago]

Is there a third more moderate option that others have seen that I might be able to propose?

I think it would be okay for the publication to note it in its errata section (perhaps in letters to editor, editorial section, etc.). It would say, "With regards to [citation], the editors would like to recognize the following list of authors, [authors], who contributed and who were not previously recognized" or the like.

Then, the online publication company (e.g., Elsevier, or whomever) could delist the original article from the electronic listing, and then re-list the same article with all authors included.

I think (but I may be mistaken) that this should solve the problem on PubMed, and avoid any potential confusion in replubishing the article in its entirety.

-TT

 

[teddygrahams]

What's wrong with plagarism that a good spell-checker wouldn't fix ?

 

[TruthSeeker]

What's wrong with plagarism that a good spell-checker wouldn't fix ?

ah, yes, plagIarism.

thanks.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Thanks for the suggestions (and spelling lesson!).

I will have to think about what I want to do next.

 

[Tez]

Dunno what field you're in, but I would echo the sentiment that you should thnk carefully about what is best for you.

Most journals allow for publication of errata - I would demand the student publish an erratum calrifying that the authors of the paper were in fact X,Y and Z, not just Z. Not great, but better than nothing.

I'va had two encounters with refereed journals and plagiarism. The first I wasnt directly involved in, but a colleague discovered that a paper published in Phys Rev A had a subsection copied, word for word, from a paper published by one of his colleagues more than 20 years previously. The journal ultimately decided that such copyright problems lay with the original author, and that he would have to pursue it! Of course he didnt bother - he was several years retired.

The second case was actually the very first paper I refereed. By a quirk I happened to realise that the exact same paper had been published in a very obscure journal, by completely different authors (the only difference between the new paper and the old, was one extra equation, obtained by substitution of one equation into another). I pointed this out to the editor - of course the paper wasnt published. However I discovered that other than that there was little the editor could do - there was no blacklist etc. So I'm sure they just sent it to another journal.

The thing is - theres almost zero chance any other referee would have picked them up - it was a serious of improbable events that led to me catching them. I'm sure plagiarized stuff is published all the time.


Oh - and heres a funny incident. A chinese colleage of mine once received his own paper to referee. I begged him to respond to the editor -
"I would love to referee this beautiful paper, but in good conscience I cannot - for I am sleeping with the wife of one of the authors." (He is married).
Despite all my pleading, he was too polite and didn't seize this wonderful oppourtunity....

 

[TruthSeeker]

Tez,
Thanks for sharing those stories.

I find it very troubling that this goes on all the time. I've heard many stories like the ones you shared since this happened to me. Most commonly, it is a reviewer who catches it by some strange twist.

I wonder what could be done to prevent this? I know there are websites that will check for plagiarism in undergraduate papers based on comparisons with other websites and scanned essays. Perhaps something like that would work but the cost would be out of this world. And it wouldn't have made any difference in my situation.

I have been so upset about this thing. It really is a betrayal.

 

[TruthSeeker]

A further update. I received the following from the Editor of the journal where the plagiarized work appeared. I have removed a few paragraphs dealing with the issue of defining plagiarism and authorship. Although it worked out, I feel sad about this.

The facets and faces of plagiarism

XXX, as a peer reviewed journal, prides itself on being scholarly and meeting the requirements inherent in that understanding. When a potential author submits an manuscript for consideration they do that with the understanding that the submission represents original work, has not been published elsewhere, is not being considered for review elsewhere and is the exclusive work of the author(s) indicated. Each author(s) is asked to submit a letter to that effect with their manuscript, a letter that also gives copyright to XXX should the article be published.
Having one’s work published is a privilege. Our readers deserve to know that what they are reading represents fair and responsible scholarship. As clinicians, researchers and academics we owe them, and each other, that at very least. It is therefore with great regret that I report a situation where this privilege was abused – undermining the journal and scholarship in xxxx practice. The article Blah blah blah published in the Summer (200X)edition; xy(b): 4-9, by the plagiarist was in fact not the work of one author but the work of three individuals. This work, submitted and published under the name of one person is actually the work of Dr. K and Dr. Truthseeker, in addition to Mr. Plagiarist. Drs. Truthseeker and K indicated in their letter to XXX, that Mr. Plagiarist submitted the manuscript and the theoretical ideas contained within it as his own, when in fact they were not. This constitutes plagiarism. It has been dealt with at the hospital and university level with Mr. Plagiarist asked to leave the PhD program of the university .

I sincerely hope that no Editor of XXX will ever again need to write such a commentary. I hope our readers can forgive us and recognize that we had a process in place that, in this instance, failed us. The Editorial Board of the Journal will be meeting in September to review our process around submission of manuscripts to see if there is anything else we might do to prevent this from happening again. We will be changing our Index (the list of all articles published in the previous year and used to enter authors’ names in electronic data bases) to reflect the correct authorship (Plagiarist, Truthseeker, & K, 200x).

 

[exarch]

Originally posted by Art Vandelay
I'm not clear on how reprinting it would solve this. If Tez is correct, and this happens frequently, I would think that the journal should already have a policy. If I were TurthSeeker, I would ask for more than just a line in the errata; it should be conspicious enough to assume that most readers would see it.

That's my point actually, that most readers reading the old copy of the journal will know nothing of the mistake that occured. Granted, Truthseeker's paper is probably not going to be the latest breakthrough that's the big buzz all over the web (no offense TS), but still, someone might reference the earlier article and see only "Mr Plagiarist" as an author, not knowing that an erratum about this article had been issued clearing up the error in a later issue.

This is the beauty of online repositories though, as they can be altered later on, but printed journals, once printed, can no longer be changed.

As I said, it's probably not that big a deal in this case, but it could be. In the end, everyone likes to receive proper credit for their work.