The president of Aizu University in Japan has resigned after two investigations found he had self-plagiarized or double-submitted a dozen papers.
Toshiaki Miyazaki was also found to have “filed an application for a project subsidized by the national government without going through the university official procedures,” which “caused confusion,” according to Aizu. He resigned effective today [July 31].
The move comes more than a year after the first investigation, as we reported, which concluded in February 2022 and found that Miyazaki had self-plagiarized four papers. At that time, he had to forfeit 20% of one month’s salary.
A month later, according to a report issued last week by the university, Miyazaki “self-reported that there were 12 papers suspected of self-plagiarism.” A preliminary investigation then began, with a full investigation starting in April and lasting until February of this year.
The university’s committee reviewed 54 papers, finding Miyazaki guilty of self-plagiarism in three and double submission in five. The committee defined the former as new papers that failed to cite previous overlapping work by Miyazaki, and the latter as papers that cited the previous work but did not advance it.
The papers were published between 2008 and 2016, and were studies of sensor networks. The committee determined that none of Miyazaki’s co-authors was at fault.
Miyazaki appealed the findings in February 2023. The committee reinvestigated, changing one of the double submissions to a case of self-plagiarism but keeping the other findings the same. They recommended retraction of the double submission papers, and correction of the self-plagiarism cases.
The report found that:
In regard to the papers written on the development of systems, Professor Miyazaki thought that it did not constitute self – plagiarism to re – use the same sentences and figures used in his own papers previously published without citations to explain the common parts of the system in his new papers . He also thought that to some extent addition of contents different from previous papers to new papers without citations did not constitute double submission.
Such practices are, some argue, a gray area.
Miyazaki also believed that after patenting his work, “he should publicize the technology repeatedly by using the opportunity as means to publish papers,” the report said. He also “failed to check the paper submission rules including the manuals and policies of the publishers to which he submitted the papers,” and “did not pay attention to the changes in the concept of research misconduct, such as the establishment of the Guidelines for the Prevention of Research Misconduct by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in 2006 and the revision of the same guidelines in 2014.”
The committee concluded Miyazaki “significantly neglected the basic duty of care expected of a researcher,” and “thought that data and research results of his students enrolled at the university belonged to him as they were under his supervision and not able to discuss with him on an equal footing.” He also included a student in the acknowledgements of a paper rather than as an author “due to the situation that it was difficult to contact them after their graduation.”
The university said it would make several changes in response to the episode, including “Providing provisions to categorize misconduct other than fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, such as self – plagiarism and double submission in concrete terms, and adding the provisions to ensure the effectiveness of research ethics education.”
Miyazaki did not respond to our request for comment.
Hat tip: Lemonstoism, author of World Fluctuation Watch
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I do not think that self plagiarism is a crime.
Sometimes it is needed in the next research. It is all his work.
Then one can reproduce an article 100 times. Originality is essential. Duplication and salami are misconducts. We are talking about science. It is well regulated.
This criminalisation of text recycling has to stop. Methods, Data Analysis, Instruments and so on, should be the same text everytime. We need standardization here not originality. How often can you rephrase “Cronbachs alpha was… ???
I agree with Omg—but only in certain circumstances, such as situations in which results from different phases of an experiment are published or otherwise disseminated in batches. In such cases, it is inevitable that sizable chunks of the paper will contain identical or near-identical information, especially in the methods section and, to a lesser degree, lit review.
Some people suggest that we just refer to the previously-published manuscripts and avoid repetitions, but that sounds unethical to me, as it would interfere with the blind review process. Yet others promote the practice where results aren’t published in batches and, instead, wait until the entire sets of data are available—which, to me, is counterproductive and interferes with our efforts to disseminate information in a timely manner.
So, as we have it, we must spend time paraphrasing the same things over and over…and over, which does not appear to be a good use of anybody’s time and other resources!
With this said, publishing the SAME papers/results repeatedly SHOULD qualify as research misconduct, in my opinion.
I fully agree with you. publish the same paper/data twice is just pure fraud.
Innovative technologies are revealing issues in research, published research findings…that was not possible before. This is food for thought for proffessors in universities in other countries in the world. Would your published work be found culpable, you as a professor?
Good discussion. I have long wondered about this issue. Granted, it is wrong to violate copyrights without permission. It is likewise wrong to publish the exact same article in two different journals.
But, it seems to me, some people think it is wrong to copy any amount of text from once publication to another. If that is true, we are each limited to a single audience for each of our ideas or discoveries, even if those ideas or discoveries might be of interest to many audiences.
Moreover, at least in my opinion, other threats to research validity, such as citation cartels and dismissive reviews, do far more harm, and accrue no adverse consequences whatsoever.
So, citing the own work exclude it from self-plagiarism? Self-plagiarism is so very different than plagiarism, if later is crime the former is an error…!!!