It’s been another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere around the web in scientific publishing, plagiarism, and retractions:
- Papers in hard science journals tend to have more evidence of plagiarism than do papers in the social sciences, according to a study in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes — a journal that was new to us.
- Papers with women as key authors tend to be cited less often than those with men as key authors.
- Budding scientists should do “anything more safe and stable than academia – like auditioning for a national reality pop-star competition, or free-climbing skyscrapers in Dubai!” says X-Gal in the Journal of Cell Science‘s Sticky Wicket column.
- Should academics publish anonymously?
- PubMed Commons gives an update on its first 400 comments.
- Steve Almond asks whether it’s OK for writers to self-plagiarize.
- Nobelist Peter Higgs says he wouldn’t have made it in today’s publish-or-perish academic system. (Related: Our take on Nobelist Randy Schekman’s tenure at PNAS now that he’s blamed “glamour” journals for warping science.)
- SpaghettiOs retracted a tweet about Pearl Harbor.
- The Pentagon retracted a claim, made on “60 Minutes,” that Guantanamo guards suffer from rampant PTSD.
Do you have any hints for me as I force a retraction against a professor who is known to plagiarize but no on has ever challenged her. The university recommends an attorney because of her reputation. Dina
Sent from my HTC EVO 4G LTE exclusively from Sprint
The link to “Steve Almond asks whether it’s OK for writers to self-plagiarize.” is dead. Here is the right one:
http://cognoscenti.wbur.org/2013/12/09/heavy-meddle-33-steve-almond
But it is a good question. If for example you write a longer paper on the brain and this or that, and you have to explain in one or two sentences what a neuron is, can you reuse a perfectly sharp or funny definition from former papers? I think it is a matter of quantity. You just must watch out that you do not end like Jonah Lehrer.
Fixed, thanks.