A paper was published in journal A. The plagiarism check tool did not show any similarity during the peer review process.
Some time after publication of the paper, the editor-in-chief was contacted by an author who had published a paper in journal B. They claimed that the paper published in journal A was plagiarised from their MSc research project thesis and asked journal A to retract the paper. The paper was checked again and a high rate of similarity was found between the paper in journal A and the thesis, and the article in journal A had used the content of the thesis. The similarity between the papers in journal A and journal B was also checked: these papers were found to be almost identical but with different authors. The paper in journal B was submitted about a week after the paper was submitted to journal A.
The editor wrote to the corresponding author of the paper published in journal A explaining the claim. The corresponding author of journal A claimed to be the proof writer of the thesis of one of the authors of paper B, and confirmed being the true author of the paper in journal A.
The authors of the paper in journal B provided journal A with the thesis that was the basis for the final paper that was the same in the two journals. The editors of journal A examined the thesis. The content was clearly used for the paper in journal A (but was not cited in the paper in journal A).
Even if the thesis was used (without being cited) in the paper in journal A, it is difficult to understand how the paper in journal B could be the exact copy of the paper in journal A. Journal A contacted the authors of the paper in journal B again and, after many exchanges, the authors of the paper in journal B admitted that one of them had ‘engaged the proof writer’. The proof writer must be the author of the paper in journal A.
Question for COPE Council
- We would like to retract the paper but we think that the plagiarism case is not very clear (or that there other problems). What should journal A do?
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.
This is a complicated situation, and could indicate several things. It could be that author B asked author A to do language editing on their paper, and author A then stole it; or it is also possible that someone else edited article B and leaked or sold it to author A. If the authors of the paper in B confirm that the lead author of the paper in A is a writer/editor of the paper in B, it could be an authorship dispute and the contribution of the ghost/proof writer/editor should be clarified and corrected to show authorship or an acknowledgement in the paper in B.
If the parties cannot resolve this, their institutions should be involved. With reviews (narrative or systematic), language help may easily veer into doing the review research and analysis itself. The authors of the paper in B need to clarify if and how the same helper helped with some or all of the thesis, as that might indicate the actual research was outsourced and confirm that the helper was an author of the derivative paper, but again the institution can help investigate.
If the lead author of the paper in A ends up as an author in the paper in B, then this seems to be a combination of redundant publication and publishing without the knowledge and permission of coauthors. The approved paper in B is the version of record and the one in A should be retracted.
If the lead author of the paper in A is found to be a non-author in the paper in B, then the paper in A constitutes plagiarism and theft of intellectual property, and in addition to retraction the authors of the paper in B could ask a lawyer to request removal.
The authors of the paper in B need to say if they know the remaining coauthor in the paper in A, and an explanation also needs to be sought from the lead author of the A paper. Were they another helper in the paper in B and the thesis, or a co-conspirator or added or invited double gift/guest author?
The editor should inform the institution of author A and ask them to formally investigate. If author A has published any other work in the journal, these papers should also be investigated. The publisher of article B should also be made aware of the situation and the journal’s conclusions, in case they wish to investigate, to check they agree with the outcome.