A commentary was reviewed by journal A and rejected. The paper was then submitted and accepted at journal B. Journal B published the commentary. After publication, a reviewer from journal A wrote to journal B with a complaint of plagiarism. Text from his/her review was used in the commentary published in journal B
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• How should the editor of journal B respond to this reviewer?
• Is it plagiarism to pull text from a peer review into a manuscript? How should this be cited or credited when the reviewer is blind to the author?
• The editor of journal B has often used suggestions from reviewers and not thought of it as plagiarism but rather suggestions from the reviewer to improve the manuscript. Is this correct?
This case raises the issue of who own’s peer reviews. Does the reviewer have copyright on their own report? The Forum agreed the intent is for reviewers to provide advice to authors, and this is given in good faith to improve the manuscript, regardless of where it is eventually published. It seems a little unreasonable for the reviewer to be so possessive of his comments. On the other hand, good practice would be for the author to acknowledge the work of the reviewer.
The Forum commented that there appears to be a certain amount of laziness on the part of the author in copying verbatim the text from the reviewer. The comments from the reviewer should be attributed. Hence a suggestion was to publish a correction or erratum to attribute the idea and wording to the reviewer. The editor should ensure the reviewer is happy to be named or it could be done anonymously.
Ultimately, it is up to the editor to decide on the context of the plagiarised text (in this case one line of text) and whether an erratum is needed.
The journal felt that an erratum was not necessary in this case, since the comments used from the reviewer were only one line of text. Both the reviewer and the author were contacted and made aware of the decision. The journal considers the case closed.