A review article was spontaneously submitted and sent out to three peer reviewers, which is standard practice for the journal. One of these reviewers expressed “serious concerns” about the paper. In a telephone conversation, s/he explained that the structure (headings, subheadings, etc), large “chunks of the text,” and most of the references had been plagiarised from a teaching syllabus that s/he had written for a recent teaching session on the same subject. One of the two authors on the review article had attended the teaching session and would have received a copy of the syllabus. Having informed the two other peer reviewers that the paper was being temporarily withdrawn from the peer review process while these allegations were investigated, the editor contacted the two authors about the alleged plagiarism. The identity of the peer reviewer was not revealed, but the editors assumed that the authors would have known as s/he was the sole author of the teaching syllabus. The authors were very apologetic: They confessed that they had used the teaching syllabus in part because English is not their first language and that this was an innocent error. They claimed that they did not realise that this sort of behaviour would amount to plagiarism. They offered to rewrite their paper, but the editors eventually decided that this would still be unacceptable and the manuscript was subsequently rejected. The authors were happy with this decision, but the peer reviewer feels that the matter should be taken further. While recognising the authors’ behaviour was unacceptable, the editor was not convinced that the extent of the plagiarism is as serious as the peer reviewer was suggesting. Some sentences in the review manuscript were similar to the teaching syllabus, as was the structure of the review, but as far as the editor could see, large chunks of the text had not been copied, as claimed by the reviewer. - Should the editor inform the authors’ institution of the allegations? The peer reviewer is seeking further sanctions. - Should the editor automatically reject any future submissions from these authors on the basis that they are unreliable? - Should the editor explain to the two other peer reviewers why the manuscript has been rejected? - Should the editor encourage the authors to contact the peer reviewer in question so that they can apologise?
- Plagiarism is a serious matter and the issue is the theft of another’s intellectual ideas not necessarily the amount of the idea that had been stolen. - It was not for editors to make the judgement about authors as it was the employer’s job to carry out an investigation. - Trust had been broken but that this did not mean that the authors’ work should be automatically banned from the journal, and the editor should wait for the outcome of the institution’s investigation before making a decision on future work. - The institution was in a better position to ask the to authors apologise to the peer reviewer if they found that the syllabus had been plagiarised. - The editor should write to the authors’ institution and request an investigation. The editor should inform the authors that s/he intends to do this. - The two other peer reviewers should be told that the editor had referred the matter to the institution but the editor does not have to give specific details.