- Case
Plagiarism in a review article
…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… - CaseCase Closed
Plagiarism of reviewer's work
…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… - CaseOn-going
Plagiarism in a book title
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… - Case
Suspected plagiarism
We had a case of suspected plagiarism recently on one of our journals, on which I would appreciate COPE’s advice. The case has been resolved, so this is not in the least urgent, but I would be interested to hear your views. Very briefly, at review stage the editor spotted substantial similarities between a paper submitted to our journal and a review published recently in a related… - Case
Attempted plagiarism of a published report
A review paper covering the prevention of a certain type of infection was submitted to Journal A. One of the reviewers identified that the paper was based word for word on a report that had published guidelines on the same area. The authors of both pieces are different. The only significant differences between the submission and the original paper were in the introduction and conclusion. The ed… - CaseCase Closed
Serial plagiarism by an experienced author
…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… - CaseCase Closed
Plagiarism of a PhD thesis
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… - CaseCase Closed
Handling self-admissions of fraud
In November 2014, the first author of a decade old paper in our journal and a 15-year-old paper from another journal informed us that he faked the data in two figure panels in the paper in our journal and one figure panel in the paper in the other journal. The main gist of the manipulation was loading unequal amounts or delayed loading of gel lanes. Self-admission of data falsification… - CaseCase Closed
Is it plagiarism to use text verbatim from a manuscript review?
A commentary was reviewed by journal A and rejected. The paper was then submitted and accepted at journal B. Journal B published the commentary. After publication, a reviewer from journal A wrote to journal B with a complaint of plagiarism. Text from his/her review was used in the commentary published in journal B Question(s) for the COPE Forum• How should the editor of… - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
…submitted manuscript with the publications provided by the reviewer and concluded that the submission presents a severe case of plagiarism with multiple copy-and-paste examples throughout the entire manuscript. The editor contacted the corresponding author by email and requested an explanation within a week. The corresponding author replied within the deadline but the editor did not find the… - CaseCase Closed
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
…verbatim text where author A is a common author. Therefore, manuscripts 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 are plagiarized manuscripts, and manuscripts 6 and 9 are self-plagiarized manuscripts. The editor in chief has halted the review process of the 11 manuscripts until the matter has been resolved. They feel that they cannot trust the corresponding author anymore and wish to reject all their manuscripts,… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
The authors of a paper published in another journal wrote to the editor of Journal A, complaining of apparent blatant plagiarism of their work by N et al. , whose paper had been published in the journal earlier in the year. Further investigation revealed that the text of the two papers was almost identical. S et al. had used one drug and N et al. had used a different one of the same class. The… - Case
Plagiarism of published paper
The advice from the Forum was to follow the flowchart on ‘Suspected plagiarism in a published article’. In the first instance, the editor should contact the corresponding author and ask for an explanation. If there is no response the editor should try to contact all of the other authors. If the response is unsatisfactory, the editor should consider informing the author’s institution and asking… - Case
A case of plagiarism
The general view was that the three year ban was harsh and perhaps not appropriate. Most members agreed that banning an author is not good policy and could lead to legal problems. Also, in dealing with cases from outside Europe and North America, we should bear in mind that plagiarism may be unintentional as authors may be less familiar with publication procedures. Hence there is a case here… - CaseCase Closed
Suspected unattributed text in a published article
…the negative connotations of an expression of concern and/or stigma for the author, which may be unwarranted A suggestion was for a less permanent ‘Editor’s note’ on the article for now, written in neutral terms. As there seems to be clear grounds for self-plagiarism, the Forum would suggest consulting the - Case
Plagiarism case
…data sets from other countries. The “original” data set had indeed been plagiarised. In addition, the description of the methods was verbatim from the 2005 article, except for the instrument used in all three articles. As a result, there appeared to be clear plagiarism, illegitimate use of data and duplication of data. None of the 2006 articles cited each other and the initial 2005 article was cited… - CaseCase Closed
Claim of plagiarism in published article
…practice). Author A sent me the articles for comparison and stated that she thought this was plagiarism and that, furthermore, her student had no experience caring for these patients so she had misrepresented herself as an authority on this topic. The student (author B) was the first author, the second author was a physician who was well published on this topic, and "writing assistance" had been… - Case
Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports
Our journal has recently been the subject of an attack of attempted plagiarism by an author from a military hospital in another country. The first evidence of this was alerted to us by one of our reviewers who identified an almost word-for-word copy of a paper previously published in which the disease being treated was changed slightly and a few numbers but everything else, including the… - CaseOn-going
Profusion of copied text passages
…in the region of 25% to >35%. These are substantial values and certainly beyond fortuitous incidences. However, in almost all cases it is difficult to suspect acts of conscious (self)plagiarism as the copied text (ranging from single sentences or fragments of sentences to passages of 2–3 sentences) can be attributed to a very large number of sources: often more than 60, and in one case… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraudulent publication
An article written by eminent doctors on a subject of great public interest, with implications for public health policy, was published in Journal A. They subsequently wrote to Journal A, indicating that an article had been published in Journal B, which heavily plagiarised theirs. The editor of Journal A wrote to the authors of the second paper, but has received no satisfactory replies. The seco…