Journal A published a paper in 2002. In 2004 the Editor of Journal A was contacted by a reader, who expressed his doubts as to the integrity of one of the authors associated with the 2002 paper. The reader suggested that the author in question had been involved in the fraudulent publication of a paper published in Journal B in 2001. The reader had noted that the article published in Journal B in 2001 was almost an exact copy of an article published in Journal C in 1990.
The Editor of Journal A examined copies of the articles from Journals B and C and concluded that this appeared to be a case of plagiarism.
How should the Editor of Journal A act in this situation, given that Journal A is not the victim of the alleged plagiarism and that Journal C has ceased publication?
The committee questioned if there had been any attempt to contact the editor of journal B and make him/her aware of the situation.
Write to the author and ask for an explanation and if that is not satisfactory contact the author’s institution. Also journal A should check the 2002 article to make sure it is not plagiarised.
We have followed COPE’s advice and have sent a letter to the author at the centre of this case expressing our concerns that the papers in question are very similar and asking for an explanation. We have also written to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal in which the second paper was published to alert him to the situation. We enclosed a copy of our letter to the author and also copies of both papers so the journal has all the information to hand.
Each letter was approved by our legal department before it was sent so the process took a little longer to complete than expected. We do not yet have any response from either the author or the journal but hopefully we should hear soon.
Further update (April 2007)
Following dispatch of the letters referred to in the first update, we did receive a response from the Editor of the journal in which the allegedly fraudulent paper was published. As a result of our letter the Editor had written to the author and asked for an explanation. We have not had any response from the author.