Warning: plagiarism may be hazardous to your safety paper

A paper on making emergency evacuations more efficient at facilities that handle hazardous materials has been retracted for plagiarism.

According to the Process Safety and Environmental Protection retraction notice, the 2013 paper, by a group at Tsinghua University in Beijing, plagiarized part of a 2007 article by Greek researchers called “Modeling emergency evacuation for major hazard industrial sites.” (The 2007 article has been cited 46 times, according to Google Scholar.)

Here’s the notice for “Emergency Response Plans Optimization for Unexpected Environmental Pollution Incidents using an Open Space Emergency Evacuation Model” (paywalled):

The authors have plagiarized part of a paper that had already appeared in RELIAB ENG SYST SAFE, 92 (2007) 01388 – 1402. 10.1016/j.ress.2006.09.009. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that their work is original and has not appeared in a publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.

We’ve reached out to authors of both papers, as well as the editor, and will update if we hear back. (Incidentally, the journal website also lists the article as “withdrawn.”)

Hat tip: Rolf Degen

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