Last week, we started a new series at Retraction Watch, “Retractions we haven’t had a chance to cover.” The first edition had sort of an environmental theme. This one has a duplication and self-plagiarism theme. But it’s not always the authors’ fault, as you’ll learn.
1. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Materials Processing Technology: These retractions are all by Reginald Smith, whose case was well-covered by Margaret Munro of CanWest News Service and then picked up by Nature. In a nutshell, Smith, now a professor emeritus at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, was found by a university inquiry to have plagiarized a number of his own papers. He was reprimanded in 2005, but continues to receive federal research funding.
The retractions, however, took several years. At the time Munro and Reich wrote about the case, there were four: Three in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, and one in the Journal of Materials Processing Technology. In December, there was a fifth, also in the Annals of the NYAS, of a 2002 paper titled “The Influence of Marangoni Flows on Crack Growth in Cast Metals:”
The above article, published in October 2002, has been retracted by agreement among the authors, the Annals director and executive editor, and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed upon due to duplication with a previous publication.
News reports suggest more retractions may be on the way.
2. Journal of the American Geriatrics Society: A study published online in the journal last August actually had its origins in an identical study in Angiology, published online the same day. According to the notice:
The following letter from Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, “Muscle volume and strength and arterial compliance after walk training with blood flow reduction in elderly women”by Hayao Ozaki, Motohiko Miyachi, Toshiaki Nakajima and Takashi Abe, published online on August 3, 2010 (DOI 10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.02989.x) in Wiley Online Library (onlinelibrary.wiley.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief, Thomas Yoshikawa, M.D., the journal Executive Editor, Joseph Ouslander, M.D., and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been recommended and agreed upon due to duplicate publication with an article published in the journal Angiology.
3. International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: We’re not really sure what happened with these three retractions, since the journal hasn’t returned our requests for comment. The reason — “accidental duplication” — seems pretty clear, but why they showed up on January 20, 2011 when they’re for retractions in 2003 and 2004, we don’t know:
Abstracts from international literature
The publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, doi:10.1006/ijom.2003.0550. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn.
Book review (of Soft Tissue and Esthetic Considerations in Implant Therapy):
The publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, doi:10.1006/ijom.2003.0514. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn.
The publisher regrets that this article is an accidental duplication of an article that has already been published, doi:10.1006/ijom.2003.0515. The duplicate article has therefore been withdrawn.
4. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine: This duplication wasn’t the authors’ fault, according to the notice:
The following article from Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, “Vessel-encoded dynamic magnetic resonance angiography using arterial spin labeling” by Thomas W. Okell, Michael A. Chappell, Mark W. Woolrich, Matthias Günther, David A. Feinberg, Peter Jezzard, published online on 25 May 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) and appearing in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Volume 64, Issue 2, pages 430-438, has been retracted by agreement between the authors, the journal Editor in Chief, Jeffrey L. Duerk and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. The retraction has been agreed due to the article having been published twice as a result of a publisher error and through no fault of the authors, with the correct version appearing in Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, Volume 64, Issue 3, pages 698–706.
5. Journal of Dermatology: Neither was this one the authors’ fault, a point the publishers want to take great pains to stress:
The publisher would like to draw the reader’s attention to an error by the journal editorial office and publisher that led to a second version of the following article being published without the authors’ knowledge.
Jinnin M, Ishihara T, Boye E, Olsen BR. Recent progress in studies of infantile hemangioma. The Journal of Dermatology 2010; 37: 283–298. doi: 10.1111/j.1346-8138.2010.00813.x was mistakenly republished in The Journal of Dermatology37: 939–955. doi: 10.1111/j.1346-8138.2010.00927.x. The publisher has withdrawn the duplicate copy.
Something I don’t understand – how can you plagiarize your own work? Doesn’t plagiarism implicity indicate the taking of someone else’s work?
Because often the authors assign copyright to the journal, and therefore the words themselves no longer belong to the author… they belong to the journal that published the original piece.
More journals are using plagiarism software (the kind we use to check undergraduate research papers) to catch these instances of self-plagiarism and will require you to re-write sections that are too close to the originals.
Let’s not forget that this particular case apparently also involved repeated re-publication of prior data.
Sometimes you really can’t help repeating yourself: M&M’s are often filled with ‘self-plagiarism’.
This is probably a silly question, but why do these authors put up with being required to assign the copyright to the journal? I admittedly am more interested in Retraction Watch than I am in most science journals, but what is so special about science journals that authros simply don’t stand their ground and require that journals except only serial publication rights?
I’m not sure copyright is the main issue here. At the vast majority of journals, authors agree they have not submitted their manuscript to multiple journals. If they are found to be in violation of that agreement — and previous publication certainly counts — then they are sanctioned by withdrawal or retraction.
Also, keep in mind that researchers are a bit over a barrel when publishing with a traditional (eg non-open access) publisher when it comes to copyright. They have to publish in good journals to have their work taken seriously (and get tenure), and at this point there are far fewer highly ranked open access journals in many fields, by pure numbers, than traditional ones. Elsevier’s policy may shed some light: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/copyright
The key is that in academic publishing, plagiarism means something more like “presenting a previously published work as ones original work”. Emphasis on “original”. If you have already published it once before, it is no longer new.
More about the Smith’s case and Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario in Macleans on Campus:
http://oncampus.macleans.ca/education/tag/little-office-of-research-integrity/
More information about Smith’s retractions here: http://littleofficeofintegrity.org/