A journal’s editors were informed about a plagiarism case just before the last step in the volume publication process. The publication fee for the paper was already paid by the author and the author completed and signed the publication agreement in which confirmed the paper's originality. The author was informed of the plagiarism issue and also that the paper would be withdrawn from publication. The author then requested reimbursement of the payment.
Questions for COPE Council
- What should the editors do? Should they reimburse the publication fee to the author, even if the money is already spent by the editors in good faith that the article was original and would be published?
- Should this matter be raised to the author's institution or affiliation?
- The paper was not published, so copyright has not been breached, but there was a plagiarism attempt. What are the editor's obligations in this situation?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
The editors need not refund the publication fee, which has been spent (at least in part) in good faith in manuscript preparation and the administration process. Also, it was the authors who, by their actions, voided the publication contract. However, if the fee was an article processing charge (APC) in an open access journal, paid after acceptance, or the fee was traditional page charges for an article in print, it could be argued that only a portion of this fee is for administration/processing. The journal could publicise a no-refunds policy in the future on its website for cases such as a paper needing to be withdrawn after acceptance.
Council suggest that the plagiarism check by the journal should have come earlier. The editors should review and reform their editorial process system to ensure detection of plagiarism in the earlier stages of processing articles.
The editor could consider informing the authors’ superior and/or person responsible for research governance at their institution. COPE would suggest the editors follow the COPE flowchart plagiarism in a submitted manuscript to deal with the case.
The journal did not breach the copyright of the original paper that was plagiarised as the paper was not published, but the author infringed the copyright. Unpublished, the plagiarised paper still represents a copyright violation by the person who plagiarised the article. Anyone who copies a third party's copyrighted content (setting aside "fair use") without permission has violated that person's copyright.