‘This is really ridiculous’: An author admitted plagiarism. His supervisor asked for a retraction. The publisher said, “nah.”

Behrouz Pourghebleh is perplexed. And also exasperated.

Pourghebleh, of the Young Researchers and Elite Club at the Urmia branch of Islamic Azad University in Iran, noticed a paper published on December 15, 2020 in an IEEE journal that overlapped 80 percent with an article he’d co-authored the year before.

Pourghebleh wrote to Zakirul Alam Bhuiyan, the associate editor who had handled the paper, on December 31, 2020, expressing concern. Bhuiyan responded the same day, saying the paper hadn’t been flagged in a similarity check, and that he would contact the authors for a response.

The first author, Karim Alinani, wrote to Pourghebleh less than two weeks later, admitting the plagiarism but citing personal circumstances:

I do not want to deny anything that you have claimed in your email. In fact, while compiling the response, I realized the blunder, and that is why I apologized and requested your mercy for my actions. My research area for more than seven years was related to recommender systems. In order to secure a work permit category that allows extended visa for me, my wife, and my daughter, I have to join unpaid post-doctorate research in the mechanical school in addition to my salaried job in computer science school and change my research focus to cloud manufacturing that was a paradigm shift for me. Therefore, it took me way too long to understand this new research area while parallelly dealing with other job responsibilities, and in order to fulfill the requirements, I needed a publication. I wrote this paper under tremendous pressure and wanted to get it published as soon as possible as the deadline was approaching but was rejected by many journals either because of scope or the paper’s length. In this duration, my daughter had critical health issues, and she was admitted to ICU, due to which my rational intellect and capabilities were paralyzed while compiling the final version for the publication. Trust me, I am not an evil person but have committed a mistake, and If you want, I can send you the proof of the claims above.

But that didn’t sit well with Pourghebleh, who, in an email back to the associate editor a week later, pointed out that:

the author claims that he is new in academic work. But, we realized that he is doing PostDoc and previously had published some papers. Therefore, it is impossible to believe that he is not aware of what he did. He has indirectly confessed in the pdf that he committed plagiarism and asking us for mercy.

Pourghebleh added:

Finally, from our perspective, the retraction of the paper is the only solution to this issue.

On January 22nd, Bhulyan responded to Pourghebleh, pointing out Bhuiyan’s own inexperience in these matters and asking Pourghebleh to “rethink and find an alternative way that the first author can do for you, instead of reporting.”

As this is the first time for me in handling such a thing, I don’t know what would be the final consequences for this case. However, I wish to share some previous consequences that happened to others due to plagiarism issues. I knew at least 3 professors (two are IEEE Fellows) have been prohibited from publishing and doing any scholarly activities with IEEE for years. Unfortunately, all of them were punished for “nothing”, but for their student things (submissions and publications without the professor’s awareness), which is reputation-damaging, career-killing, and pathetic. I learned these when I was chairing some IEEE conferences and got the list from IEEE.

Regarding this case, If I report this, IEEE may remove the plagiarized paper. However, this may not be the final step. The journal may report to IEEE that may come with a further consequence, which would be serious like the example above. I cannot make sure what would happen exactly.”

Pointing out that “some of the coauthors are renowned researchers,” Bhuiyan added:

If reporting to IEEE, I think, as I understand from experience, these high-level authors should have not been much aware of the first author’s work. Another reason is that they may not have checked the work, as the first author is not an undergrad student or a MS student. As a result, reporting to IEEE would bring a serious impact on their job, reputation as well as and career. I have thought about this so seriously for the last several days. I am just thinking it would be tough for me to be a witness for this (you may see my informal note at the end)

That led Bhuiyan to suggest, well, something other than retraction:

I wish you can rethink and find an alternative way that the first author can do for you, instead of reporting. Instead of proceeding to report, I can try my best to resolve between you et al and the first author of that paper so that several people’s career and reputation can be protected.    

That “informal note” Bhuiyan referred to? It was a plea that began:

[[P.S. this is a personal opinion thinking from my point of view as a human, not as an AE, not as a professional. I was moved by the author’s personal email to you. This motivated me to write this expression. I saw the author admitted it and asked for your forgives several times in the email. He regretted the mistake. I think in all religions, the almightly God (to me it is Allah) promises to forgive people’s sins and bad doings. 

In an email a few days later, Vahideh Hayyolalam, the first author of the original paper – Pourghebleh was second author – found Bhuliam’s note alarming. Hayyolalam, of Islamic Azad University’s Tabriz branch, took it as an offer to trade an authorship in exchange for not reporting the plagiarism:

The second point that I would like to discuss is that you have offered a few suggestions to my co-author. Those suggestions are really unappreciated. I never expect such offers from an AE. We are not in a black market, and we never do paper trading. How can you suggest adding someone’s name who had no contribution to the paper? On the other hand, you sent it to my co-author individually … .

Bhuliam said it wasn’t a “trade,” it was a “collaboration:”

I have no other idea how to except the first author. In a personal opinion, I tried to share some personal opinions with your colleague. However, it seems you are bringing it to the “public” and thinking of it as “trading”, which I never thought of. I have co-supervised Ph.D. students from two other countries and other schools, they are working for themselves while they are working for me. I don’t mean it as “trade” rather than collaboration. I have some collaborators I work with them, share my research ideas with them and they share their output with me and we publish together. I don’t think of this as “trade”. My idea to your colleague was just like that. You defined it as “trade” that is out of knowledge. 

Hayyolalam then wrote to all of the authors of the paper, asking that they withdraw it themselves:

Dear Karim, you might be in a hard situation; however, none of your excuses can be convincing for committing a plagiarism issue. You, yourself, are definitely aware of this. We spent so much time on our paper, and you simply ruined it.

Dear professors, I am not sure whether you are informed about the plagiarism issue of your paper or not.

This scandal is about your recently published paper (please click) and ours (please click).

To be honest, at first, we wanted to request the journal to retract your paper. Then, we reconsidered our decision for the sake of your reputation and the possible outcomes (banning from IEEE for years), which can ruin your career as well. We decided to reconsider it since we understand that you never expect this manner from a person who is doing Post-Doc, then you didn’t check it. However, we still on the mind of retraction but in a way without any harm to you.

Therefore, we kindly suggest you, please ask the journal / or even IEEE to withdraw your paper as soon as possible. Please CC us ([redacted]) in all your contacts with the Journal and IEEE. So that we can witness your effort for withdrawal. Unless we have to further the process ourselves, which can lead to detrimental effects on your reputation and career, and we do not like it.

If there won’t be any action from your side by Feb. 08, unfortunately, we will further the process.

On February 2, the corresponding author, Deshun Lu of the Hunan University of Science and Technology in Xiangtan,China, did just that, writing to Bhuiyan:

It has come to my notice that a paper has been published in IEEE Access, entitled: “Service Composition and Optimal Selection in Cloud Manufacturing: State-of-the-Art and Research Challenges,” DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3045008. This paper was submitted and published without my permission by Karim Alinani, who is my postdoctoral student and primary author of the paper.

As his postdoctoral supervisor and the corresponding author of this paper, I consider this work not up to the standard for postdoctoral research, and therefore I disagree with this publication.

It is therefore requested to kindly withdraw the paper from IEEE Access.

Bhuiyan forwarded that email right away, and an IEEE editor acknowledged receiving it the next day. But on March 2, IEEE Access managing editor Jenny Mahoney said no dice:

In the present case, we performed an investigation and discussed the case with the EIC, IEEE Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and myself. We believe that the article overlap is small enough that it does not warrant any further investigation. 

In addition, the authors adequately cited your Springer paper “Exploring the “state-of- the-art service composition approaches in cloud manufacturing  systems to enhance upcoming techniques” in their work. Therefore, the case has been dismissed.

Not surprisingly, Pourghebleh wasn’t satisfied with Mahoney’s response, either:

According to the last email that we got as the final answer for our complaint, one can take a published paper as a reference, play with words, paraphrase and change the text, then submit it to another journal as a new paper. This is really ridiculous.

In the meantime, the paper has been cited once, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.

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