- 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. - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2019: In the aftermath of authorship violations in philosophy
Michael Dougherty, Professor of Philosophy, Ohio Dominican University speaks about authorship violations in philosophy including: using pseudonyms in philosophy and how to avoid post-publication pseudonym surprises. why we should be concerned about plagiarism, types of plagiarism in philosophy and what are the options for whistleblowers? What editors and… - 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… - CaseOn-going
Habitual plagiarist
…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… - CaseCase Closed
Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?
An article was submitted to Journal A for publication. According to the journal’s policy, the article was scanned using anti-plagiarism detection software, which gave a 17% similarity result. As the journal allows up to 20% similarity, the article was sent for peer review to two reviewers. One of the reviewers noted that the article had been published in a similar form in a conference… - Flowcharts
Reviewer suspected to have appropriated an author’s ideas or data
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/plagiarism-published-article">Plagiarism in a published article … - CaseOn-going
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
An article published in a journal in 2023 appears to have been plagiarised in a possible predatory journal but the publishers are unable to get a response from the predatory journal or affiliated Institute. The article (Article A) was submitted to Journal X in 2022 and published early in 2023. The authors reached out to the Journal after finding that another article dated from 2021 (Art… - CaseOn-going
Paper B plagiarised paper A: what to do if a journal does not respond?
The author X of a paper published by journal A complained to the editor-in-chief of journal A that his/her paper has been plagiarised by a paper that has been published later by journal B. Moreover, the authors of the paper in journal B allegedly did not respond to letters sent by author X asking for an explanation about the apparent plagiarism. The editor-in-chief of journal A compared… - CaseOn-going
Author requesting removal of verbatim text from published paper
The Forum advised that it is important where the overlap or plagiarism occurred in the article. If the verbatim text is in the results section or directly affects the findings of the paper, then retraction might be necessary. However, if the copied text is in the introduction or methods sections, for example, then a corrigendum might be more appropriate. The journal should decide if…