plagiarism

An author contacted our journal in August 2011 informing us that a paper he had published in our journal in 2005 had been published, word for word, in another journal (journal X), under a different title and author group, in 2007.

We followed the appropriate COPE flowchart and contacted the editor of journal X. The editor of journal X told us in September 2011 that he would publish a retraction and a letter submitted from the author group admitting a "disagreeable mistake".

Journal X publishes infrequently, so I checked over the past 12 months for the retraction and published letter. The notice and letter were never published and the article is still available through the journal's website and SCOPUS. I contacted the editor of journal X in October 2012 to ask him if he planned to retract the article and publish the letter, as we had agreed. He replied that the article was no longer available. I sent him the link where I was able to retrieve it and he did not reply back.

The original author of the paper contacted the author group's institution in September 2011, but he never received a response.

In the COPE flowchart for suspected plagiarism, the journal that published the plagiarized article issues a retraction; however, what should be done if that journal will not correct the record? Journal X is not a member of COPE.

Suspicions were raised on 20 September 2012 by a reviewer who commented that some of the passages in a submission from Dr J were similar to an earlier paper published in our journal by the same author. An iThenticate check indicated a similarity index of 60%: however, the overlap was not from that earlier paper but from another source by a different author which had contributed 41% of the material.

This prompted an iThenticate check of the published paper, which gave a similarity index of 57%, with 45% of the material from three papers by other authors. (It should be noted that this paper was reviewed and accepted before iThenticate was available for checking incoming submissions.)

It was clear that the new submission should be rejected. The key issue was the action to be taken about the paper that had already been published.

The editor of the journal in which two of the key sources had been published kindly provided copies and the published paper was checked by hand against these two earlier papers. This check established that the iThenticate report was reasonably accurate. It appeared that one of the plagiarized papers had been used as a means to improve the quality of the English while the other had provided a framework for the reporting of the statistical results: Dr J had substituted new figures in the running text of the earlier paper.

COPE guidelines were followed and a carefully worded letter was sent asking Dr J for an explanation. In summary, his reply said that: (a) he was building on the work of the earlier authors, (b) he did not understand or mean to do it and (c) he was very sorry and would not do it again.

Dr J had made six other submissions to our journal, all of which had been rejected on the grounds of quality. iThenticate checks on these revealed similarity indexes between 66% and 77%. Typically up to three sources had been plagiarized to contribute up to 63% of the material. A search using Google Scholar identified that Dr J had published over 20 other papers in different journals since 2005.

In the light of this information, Dr J’s explanation of naivety was considered to be implausible and the decision was taken to retract the published paper. Dr J was given a final opportunity to respond and gave the same explanation for the overlap. The retraction will be published in the next issue of our journal and on the journal website. In view of the extent of the plagiarism, the decision was also taken to inform the president of his institution.

There remains the question of whether the editors of the other journals in which Dr J has published work should also be informed of this case.
The editor would welcome the comments of the Forum on this issue.

Following this incident, the journal has reviewed its policy to detect and discourage plagiarism in submitted work.

• As a matter of routine, the journal now checks all of the work submitted for publication using iThenticate.
• Submissions that appear to include a significant amount of previously published material are investigated further to establish whether that material has been referenced and attributed appropriately.
• Where the overlap is found to exceed an acceptable level, we write to the author(s) providing a link to the full report and inviting them to withdraw the submission, or alternatively to revise it extensively to reduce the overlap and to indicate where they are quoting the work of others (or their own previously published work). We also ask for their comments on the overlap.
• If the author cannot provide an acceptable explanation or where the overlap is very significant, then we will immediately reject the submission.
• The issue of plagiarism is being included in the Journal Reviewer Development Programme to heighten awareness of the problem within the Reviewer Panel.
• We are seeking to engage in discussions and the exchange of information on plagiarism with editors of other journals in the field.

We have also retrospectively checked the overlap of all submissions currently in process and identified several others with unacceptably high similarity indexes. We are asking those authors to withdraw their submissions or to revise them to eliminate the overlap.

Of the 231 submissions that have been checked to date, 71% have an iThenticate similarity index of less than 30%. Over 12% have a similarity index in excess of 40%—the level at which iThenticate gives a plagiarism alert. Excluding the eight submissions from Dr J, there were 9% falling into this category. The remaining 16% fall in the range 30–39% and have been investigated. In all of these cases, the overlap was in acceptable quotations and in the bibliography and no further action has been taken. The, as yet unanswered, question is whether these figures are typical for an international journal.

A reviewer, R1, brought to our attention several suspected cases of plagiarism in paper A1, submitted by authors A.

The main concerns were:
— large parts of paper A1 resembled paper B submitted by a different group of authors B, with one of the most major changes being a change in the observation day;
— large parts of a section were taken from paper C by author C, including an entire figure;
— other sentences were copied from other papers.

The paper was rejected with no further repercussions for authors A. Authors A then resubmitted the manuscript to our journal a year later. We had since become more aware of pursuing cases of suspected plagiarism and asked for a statement before submission to peer review. Authors A answered in great detail, providing lots of information, apologizing profoundly and promised to take the utmost care that this would never happen again. We discussed this case and decided to proceed with peer review, treating this as a once only mistake and noticed that all of the criticized sections and more had been removed and/or rewritten.

Paper A2 was then reviewed by reviewer R2, who found new cases of plagiarism, different from the first. Again, the corresponding author A, when asked to comment, apologized profusely.
We are unsure how to treat this, as the sections copied are not too extensive. However, given the author's history, we feel the need to issue a ban or possibly notify the institute? Does the Forum agree?

We received a complaint of plagiarism by Dr A concerning a book that has just been published. This case is ongoing since January 2012.

Authors B and C published a new, very extended edition (+1000 pages), on a topic that previously was covered in part in an English book by author B (published in 2006). Part of this book was based on a German book published back in 1993 by Dr A and author B. The English book was taken off the market by the publisher because of alleged "plagiarism" by author B. The publisher apologized to author B for this withdrawal which seemed to have been a mistake (but there is no written documentation on this). Copyright of this book was transferred to author B. Dr A has made a complaint of plagiarism for this book too. Copyright of the German book was transferred to both authors (Dr A and author B). It is therefore unclear what exactly has been plagiarized (in the 2006 book and the revised edition).

As the publisher, we sought two independent reviews. Unfortunately, the publisher asked the authors to come up with the names of the “independent” reviews, so we are a little hesitant to rely on both reviews. However, the reviews are respected scientists, and both state that “similarity is inevitable because of the involvement from the same author (author B) and overlap in the topic treated. It is also clear that the book is not based on new material, but it brings together existing material in a presentable form, but has a different formulation form and interpretation of material”.

Authors B and C mention that they have included all appropriate quotes/references to the previous book. Dr A has received parts of the text for review, and the authors have been willing from the start to rewrite anything that comes close to the original text of Dr A, should there be any similarity.

The lawyer, hired by author B, informed all parties, based on both reviews, that this is not a case of plagiarism. Dr A in the meantime has also hired a lawyer because he is not in agreement. So far we have not heard anything from this lawyer. Dr A now requests a statement from publisher on the case.

We believe there are strong personal issues at work here. With books, there is no editor-in-chief that can investigate the case or make a decision with help of his editorial board/associate editors or other body in the form of a society.

At the moment we, as the publisher, will make the new book (of over 1000 pages) available to Dr A so that he can indicate which sections show overlap with the 1993 German book (published by him and author B) and probably the 2006 English book.

Is there any advice from the Forum on this complex case?

We received a complaint from an author claiming that her PhD thesis had been plagiarized in a journal article. After many discussions, the editorial office decided that the authors should resolve this issue among themselves, as it was an author dispute.
After further correspondence, the editorial office is now also saying that because the thesis is not published anywhere, there is no need to cite it in the reference list. The instructions for authors state that: "The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have been published or accepted for publication. Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text."

There are many opinions/views/cases available on different websites. But the prevailing view seems to be that any document, whether an unofficial discussion piece (or an unpublished thesis?), must be cited. What is the opinion of the COPE Forum?

Author F published a single case report (CR1) in my journal. A few months later, I received a letter from author G who claimed that the case published by author F was a verbatim copy of his case report published in another journal H. On comparison of the documents it was obvious that CR1 was an exact reproduction of the article of author G. More than 90% of the sentences overlapped in both articles and even the clinical photographs were identical. The case report by author G was published 6 years before the publication of CR1. Both authors work in different institutions that are more than 500 km apart. Neither journal is indexed in Pubmed and journal H is not a member of COPE.

I contacted author F but received no reply to multiple emails. I also contacted the editor of journal H and informed my editorial board members about the case. One of the associate editors recognised author F’s name from another case report which had been accepted for publication at the journal. This second case report (CR2) had been reviewed and recommended by reviewers and no one suspected plagiarism. Following some research into this matter, the associate editor found that CR2 was an exact copy of another article by author P published in journal H. Publication of the article by author P predated the submission of CR2 by 7 years. In CR2, the text and clinical photographs were identical to the article of author P. As the journal is not indexed in any major database, no one had detected the plagiarism. We were able to stop publication of the second case (fortunately the manuscript was in the queue for the printer but had not yet been published).

It seems author F is habituated to plagiarism. It is not known how many such plagiarised papers he has published in various journals. Apparently, author F has never published any papers in journals indexed in Pubmed, suggesting he is aware of what he is doing.

What advice would COPE offer regarding this case?

A reader flagged up that a review article originally published in a journal X in April 2003 had subsequently appeared with a few minor additions and deletions in journal Y (our journal) in July 2004 and then in journal Z (of which the author is an editor) in September 2006. The authors on the paper are all from the same institute although with some minor differences between the publications: journal X has three authors; journal Y has two of these authors plus a further two; and journal Z has all three authors from the first paper, plus one from the second journal and a further two new authors.

The editor-in-chief and the publisher reviewed the two review articles from journal X and journal Y side by side and identified that significant portions of the text from the 2003 journal X publication were used verbatim in 2004 in journal Y. Specifically:
(1) The title of the paper is identical.
(2) Three out of seven headings are identical.
(3) The abstracts are identical except for a couple of minor amendments.
(4) Three out of the seven sections within the review article are identical barring a few minor changes (eg, dropping single words like ‘other’ and an abbreviation is described in full instead).
(5) In the remaining four sections, the majority of the text is identical except for a few similar minor changes, but has the occasional new sentence(s) and/or paragraph(s).
(6) Four of the five images that appear in journal Y already appeared in journal X’s review article. Journal Y had no other images.

Journal X’s paper is only cited once in journal Y and this is only in reference to permission to reproduce an image. No other citation or reference is given to the paper in journal X.

The editor-in-chief of journal Y followed our standard procedures and wrote to the corresponding author seeking an explanation. They responded promptly and indicated that they “object (to) the use of the term plagiarism in this context”. Although the “stated facts are correct (the author has) copied and pasted sentences and whole paragraphs from (journal X) 2003 papers in (journal Y’s) 2004 paper and (Journal Z’s) 2006 paper… all three papers were no (sic) original articles, but invited reviews”. The author also noted that “(journal Y’s) paper duly cited the prior (journal X) paper… so that nothing was ever concealed”. The author goes on to say that “as an author I have the factual and intellectual responsibility for the content of my papers, and if I want to express the same thoughts and say the same things, I am almost obliged to use the same words, unless I find better ones, and this is exactly what I have done in good faith without plagiarizing anyone… I have been invited for updated reviews, and therefore I have updated what needed to be updated and left what was still true. I am not aware that I have violated anyone’s rights or rules. I have never signed a copyright release form that would prevent me from using my very own words again”. He copied in the Dean of Research Affairs at his institution, who we have not approached for a response, and who has also not commented on the situation.

We would be grateful for the Forum’s advice on whether to pursue this as we would an original article case of self-plagiarism (ie, retract the paper) or whether it would suggest an alternative course of action(s). We have not investigated the allegation made about journal Z as it is outside of our remit.

Several Europe-based authors, including well known, respected and much published ones, submitted an essay for the journal's section on research methodology.

We rejected it without external review as it wasn't making sufficiently new points. We offered to see it again, however, if it was revised and if it added some worked examples using this methodology within published studies. A year later the article was resubmitted after revision, and we sent it for review.

One of the reviewers, who was chosen by the handling editor via a PubMed search, replied quickly, saying that:
1) she used to work in the senior authors' department where her PhD was supervised by the most senior author;
2) the worked examples in the revised submitted article, and some of the accompanying explanatory text, were copied and pasted (with translation into English but no attribution) from her unpublished PhD thesis, which was on this same topic;
3) she had contacted the most senior authors about this, and they had apologised saying they hadn't realised that the first and most junior author, who had revised the submitted article, had lifted the cases from the reviewer's PhD thesis. They said that the first author was contrite, and they advised the reviewer to tell the journal what had happened and seek our advice;
4) this reviewer also supplied a helpful, constructive and positive review of the article (as, meanwhile, did another reviewer and subsequently did a third, as we felt unable to use the first reviewer’s review).
We replied saying we took plagiarism very seriously and that we appreciated the reviewer's constructive approach to all of this. We suggested that she should be added as an author of the revised article, and she agreed—in a phone call with the editor handling this article—and seemed happy with that solution. We asked all of the authors to write to us to confirm: (a) that plagiarism had occurred and (b) that the reviewer was now a coauthor of the article. All did so.

The revised article, with the new coauthor, was provisionally accepted after appraisal at the manuscript committee meeting (where all members had read the article's full history) and is now back with all of the authors for final revision. We expect to accept the article and we intend to reiterate in the acceptance letter that plagiarism is a serious form of misconduct, that we appreciate everyone's cooperation here and that we hope the institution now has clear rules on avoiding misconduct.

Did we do the right thing, and is there more we should also do?