- Case
Self plagiarism
…Examination of four or five easily accessible references revealed an unacceptably high proportion of direct replication: many phrases and sentences and some complete paragraphs. The paper was rejected with an explanation that this practice of self-plagiarism is unacceptable, and that the journal would be contacting the head of research ethics at the author’s institution. The author appealed against… - 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… - 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… - CaseOn-going
Self-plagiarism of review article
…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… - 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… - 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… - CaseCase Closed
Possible self-plagiarism and/or prior publication
…related issues arise from this. Firstly, as it is the journal’s policy to conduct blind peer reviews of each submission received, it is impossible to uphold this policy where submissions already exist, as does the present one, in an identical form in the public domain. Secondly, there is an issue of self-plagiarism. In academic contexts, it is not permissible to re-use identical copy for multiple… - CaseCase Closed
An ambiguous plagiarism case
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… - Case
Plagiarism or redundant publication?
_ There had been some deception and a case of redundant publication, not plagiarism. _ The authors failed to declare an overlap, and citation is not enough. _ The authors should be given a chance to reply. _ A reminder should be sent (giving a time limited response), with reference made to the COPE guidelines otherwise the matter will be referred to the authors’ institution.… - Case
Redundant publication
A complaint of redundant publication was made by a reader, who claimed that a second paper had been published in the journal, after the first had already been published elsewhere. No permission letter was obtained by the author of the second paper and the first paper had not been cited. … - The editors should write to the authors and publish a retraction. - The editors should write to the… - Case
Possible plagiarism and fabrication
…with placebo for the difference in the incidence of nausea. 12. The second paper cites the first paper twice, once in the introduction and once in the discussion. Both citations are out of any context. According to the Royal College of Physician of London (1991), this represents serious scientific misconduct as it is about piracy, plagiarism, and fraud. It is very likely that actually all the data in… - Case
Duplicate submission, self-plagiarism
The journal commissioned a Seminar that arrived in September 2004 and was sent for peer review. In March 2005, we received a peer reviewer’s comments pointing out a very similar paper by the same authors in another journal, published in December 2004. On careful comparison, there was over 70% text copied word-for-word, sometimes with trivial alterations, from the previous publication. - CaseCase Closed
Plagiarism versus questionable research writing practice
The authors of a paper were asked to explain alleged plagiarism in a submitted and subsequently accepted manuscript. This was based on a Turnitin report showing 28% similarity between the submitted manuscript (Author B) and a previously published paper (Author A), and 37% similarity between a published manuscript (Author A) and a submitted manuscript (Author B). The authors came back with an… - Case
Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality
This is a complicated case which involves possible plagiarism, double submission and reviewer misconduct. The timeline is as follows: In year n, a paper P1 authored by A1 and A2 was published in the English language journal X. The paper describes a theoretical analysis of a particular phenomenon. In year n+6, paper P2 was published in a non-English language outlet by… - Case
Sections of plagiarised text in an e-publication
…for plagiarism are retraction and public admission. The grey area is how to treat the situation as the science does not appear to be flawed, only how it is presented as the big picture. While the case clearly involves plagiarism (true plagiarism, self-plagiarism and unquoted use of text), there is no way to ensure the science is fairly presented while the authors are reprimanded. Accepting… - CaseCase Closed
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
…scientific validity of the way in which the proof-of-concept was demonstrated in the article. Question(s) for the COPE Forum • Where does the journal's responsibility to protect the student's rights lie and does it need to go further than the correction and retract? • Is this a clear case of plagiarism that demands a retraction? • How much does the structure and text need… - CaseCase Closed
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
…plagiarised article was published 6 years ago by authors from an Asian country. In line with the COPE flowchart on suspected plagiarism in a submitted paper the corresponding author was asked for an explanation. The response stated that there had been a mistake and that the author wished to withdraw the manuscript. The editor in chief replied to say that the editorial board was not satisfied with the…