Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper

Dirk H. R. Spennemann

An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member of its editorial board, Retraction Watch has learned.

“I am appalled that it took, essentially, from November 2022 until now, September 2024, to resolve what was a fairly straightforward matter,” Dirk H. R. Spennemann, of Charles Sturt University in Albury, Australia, wrote in a Sept. 18, 2024, email to the editor-in-chief of Buildings, an MDPI title.  

The offending paper, “A Review on Building Design as a Biomedical System for Preventing COVID-19 Pandemic,” was published in April 2022 in a special issue Spennemann had edited.

But in June of that year, Marco Spada, a senior lecturer in architecture at the University of Suffolk in the United Kingdom, informed Buildings the work borrowed heavily from two previous publications without proper citation. Although many sentences had been reworded using synonyms, the plagiarism was extensive and obvious.

Spada had recognized the article, a version of which he had previously reviewed – and rejected – as a referee for Sustainability, a different MDPI journal. Elements such as the title, the order in which the authors appeared and some of the abstract had changed, Spada told us. But it was still the same paper.

“Clearly they managed to outsmart the system,” Spada said.

The review’s corresponding author, Mugahed Amran, an associate professor at Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University in Al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia, did not respond to an email seeking comment, nor did three of his coauthors whose email addresses were listed on the paper.

According to Spennemann, the journal did not tell him about Spada’s allegations until Oct. 25, 2022. At that point, he was “deeply buried in end-of-semester marking,” he told us. On November 18, “based on a (very much regrettably) cursory examination,” Spennemann said, he determined that the plagiarism was “not serious.”

Two days later, however, Spada reached out to Spennemann, providing details of his allegations, which Spennemann said Buildings had not done.

Based on an in-depth examination of the plagiarized article and the source papers, Spennemann told us, he found plagiarism had indeed occurred. On Nov. 23, 2022, he recommended “the authors be asked to withdraw/retract their paper within a week or, failing that, that the paper be withdrawn by MDPI Buildings and deleted from the website.” 

Spennemann also complained to the journal that, as guest editor of the special issue, he had not learned of Spada’s email in June.

An extended back-and-forth with journal staff ensued, according to Spennemann, during which he felt action was happening “behind the scenes.” He said the journal asked five other members of the editorial board for their assessment and on Feb. 20, 2023, informed him it had sent the case to the publisher’s ethics team. 

Spennemann said he inquired several times over the following months about the case. On Oct. 24, 2023, the journal told him a retraction process had “been initiated but that authors need to concur and that authors are unresponsive.” Spennemann asked to be informed of further developments, he said, but was only formally notified of the retraction on Sept. 10, 2024 – four days after the retraction notice was published on the journal’s website.

In his resignation email to editor-in-chief David Arditi, which Retraction Watch has seen, Spennemann wrote, in part:

I am taking this step because of your and the managing editors of MDPI Buildings failure to act in a timely and proactive manner when dealing with the plagiarism case related to manuscript buildings-1606920.

As the editor of the special issue “Post-COVID Architecture Research” I was not informed until 25 October 2022 of allegations made as early as 14 June 2022. I was provided with what I took to be the full details of the case. Following communication by an external party (Dr. Marco Spada) I was alerted to the fact that the original allegation was far more detailed than I was led to believe. I specifically requested the full set of information from the managing editor of MDPI Buildings which was provided on 20 November 2022. Throughout the ensuing process the managing editor of MDPI Buildings kept me in the dark about any progress unless I, often repeatedly, formally requested updates. Even then, any updates I received were sparse and not detailed. It would appear that MDPI Buildings did not pursue any concerns with the authors of the manuscript in question with the importance that the matter deserved and allowed the authors to reply at leisure rather than in a timely manner.

I am appalled that it took, essentially, from November 2022 until now, September 2024, to resolve what was a fairly straightforward matter and which could, and should have been resolved with due process in six months or less.

The review has been cited 15 times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.

“It’s sad because we spotted it when it still had something like two citations,” Spada told us. “It should have been a little bit quicker, the [retraction] process.”

Spennemann added:

What is not acceptable is the delay and lack of responsiveness. If I were to hazard a guess, it is not symptomatic of MDPI but of the journal Buildings and the lack of editorial rigour by the editor in chief and the managing editors. I have been working with the managing editor of MDPI Heritage (I am not on the board) and cannot but notice a very different attitude and proactiveness that is so lacking at Buildings.

Replying to Spennemann’s resignation email, Claire Xiang, a managing editor of Buildings, wrote to him on September 19:

When we received your message about this manuscript for the first time, we took this issue seriously and asked for an investigation immediately, which is in line with the COPE’s suggestion. Unfortunately, the authors did not cooperate with our work at every step. They did not reply to our email or they replied to say one author was in a health problem.

MDPI has put considerable effort into speeding up the retraction process across all our journals and implemented a new process which has led to a significant improvement in this area. As a result of this case, all journal staff is receiving training on the management of post-publication case management and the retraction procedure, and specific staff members are being assigned to deal with ethics cases going forward.

We emailed MDPI and Arditi for comment. An MDPI public relations representative responded:

As a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics, we are obliged to closely adhere to their guidelines when it comes to removing an article (Retraction) from the scientific record. In situations of potential plagiarism COPE provides specific guidelines on how to handle such complaints.

While we cannot provide specific details about this case, a typical investigation requires significant coordination between the Editorial Office, authors, Editorial Board Members and at times external stakeholders. We always strive to retract articles as soon as possible, however, the necessity to coordinate between various stakeholders means that this process takes time, as each step is significant in order to satisfactorily complete this process.

As to how an article that had already been rejected by one MDPI journal due to plagiarism could be accepted for publication in another, the publisher explained:

The MDPI’s submission system, SUSY, is equipped to link all prior submissions of one manuscript across various MDPI journals. Due to major changes performed by the authors to the original version submitted this paper was not identified as such.

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15 thoughts on “Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper”

  1. Most of the time, rookie authors don’t know what they do is plagiarism. Almost all students and many professors I know weren’t educated on plagiarism, including even some research deans!

    1. Here, they were told by one journal that their paper was plagiarisms and worked to hide this before resubmitting elsewhere.

      1. I know but even that could be out of not knowing what exactly is plagiarism and how to correct it. It is very likely that they may have thought that if we paraphrase the borrowed sentences, it becomes OK.

        This is especially more prevalent nowadays since a lot of plagiarism is caught by similarity checking services like iThenticate. Therefore, many authors mistaken plagiarism with similarity. They think if they eliminate similarity, they have eliminated plagiarism.

        I have seen lots of such cases of plagiarism that happened without any bad intentions and only and only because of a lack of education on plagiarism.

    2. @Eva: only minimal common sense and basic sense of right and wrong is required to realize that copying large parts of something someone else wrote and representing it as one’s own work and ideas is both unethical and low quality. That someone wasn’t educated about what is plagiarism makes a poor excuse.

      1. Big B, no your comment is incorrect. This has nothing to do with common sense (see examples below). Plagiarism laws are something to be learned. It comes in different shapes, each should be educated.

        Many people don’t know that copying content from other sources is considered plagiarism. Honestly, I too didn’t know this; I am glad I learned it from the internet before my first article, because my own professor (and most likely our whole university) too didn’t know it LOL. So if you want a counter-example to your common sense, I can count hundreds of doctors who had no idea about this!

        Or another funny example: My own common sense was the opposite of your expectation in the case of self-plagiarism. I was surprised when I learned that if I copy my own previous content, I have plagiarized myself! Such an absurd idea! I thought how on earth someone can plagiarize himself; such a stupid thing! Many colleagues too refused to accept this in the beginning. They kept telling me it is my own paper, why can’t I use my own sentences that belong to me in another paper that also belongs to me?! See? Their common sense was again the opposite of what you expect.

        What I said is not an excuse, nor do I know these authors or care about them even one bit to defend them. I just added an important point, i.e., we need better educations for plagiarism, because I have seen even Research Deans (not one dean, but several deans) who don’t know the basics of science and publishing, including what is plagiarism and what is not plagiarism.

    3. Most of the time rookie criminals don’t know what they do is illegal. Almost all criminals I know weren’t educated on criminal law, including even some Mafia bosses!

      See how silly that excuse sounds?

      Unacceptable.

      1. @B. Essie: “Most of the time rookie criminals don’t know what they do is illegal. Almost all criminals I know weren’t educated on criminal law, including even some Mafia bosses”

        No, you don’t know even one criminal who is not educated on criminal law. All people are already educated on the illegality of crimes by their parents, media, school, and society. Most people are educated on illegality of crimes years before school. Parents and media teach very young kids that stealing or murdering is illegal.

        The very fact that rookie criminals, even young criminal KIDS, do flee and hide after committing a crime shows that they are indeed educated on criminal law as they do know that what they do is illegal and deserving punishment.

        On the other hand, people are not educated by their parents or TV or schools about plagiarism. They learn it in the last year of their univ or even years after that.

        What I said calls for educational programs that teach kids and university students different forms of plagiarism. What you said calls for programs to ensure mental retarded people are not born.

    4. This is grasping for straws. Rules about Plagiarism is taught to Bachelor students. Rules on Plagiarism are outlined on every journal/publisher website. Absolutely nobody can claim they didn’t know what they were doing.

      1. It is very incorrect to say “Rules on Plagiarism are outlined on every journal/publisher website.” Publishers might have web pages to teach plagiarism, but journals usually don’t teach plagiarism on their websites. They just tell the authors make sure your paper is free of any plagiarism. They don’t go on teaching the authors plagiarism rules.

        And most people don’t read publishers’ website. Many of them even don’t read the journal’s author guidelines before submission.

        And no, at least here, rules on plagiarism are not taught at all to Bachelor or Masters or PhD students as a mandatory curriculum. They sometimes hold voluntary workshops for a few professors (not students) who are interested in publishing, where they draft an article from scratch. Just it, nothing more. Only there they might (or might not) teach professors different forms of plagiarism, again not necessarily.

        1. That is really astonishing, since in the US we’ve been taught about plagiarism since high school. How can teachers discourage copying text — or demand students write original content — without bringing up the concept of plagiarism? Where do you live?

          1. Js, I’ve written a considerable amount on the topic of plagiarism and on related unethical writing practices and my now somewhat dated research and experience largely lines up with Eva’s views: A significant segment of academics in the US, from undergraduates all the way to full professors, seem to be misinformed about key aspects of scholarship related to the concept of plagiarism.

  2. Dr. Spennemann is still too kind. He thought it was not symptomatic of MDPI, but rather of the journal Buildings. He also gave good comments on Heritage’s managing editor.

    Heritage is a new journal indexed in ESCI, and their ME should be, and likely is, happy to address questions from an esteemed scholar like Dr. Spennemann. As for Buildings? In such a big journal, every staff member is tasked to the absolute limit. The case occurred in mid-2022, when MDPI was reaching its peak and staff were under pressure. Then in 2023, when MDPI suffered a significant blow, the staff became even more strained, being asked to “collect” more submissions. Those in-house editors are simply too overwhelmed to handle cases like this, which require intense case-by-case discussions.

    Also, they didn’t have an efficient ethics procedure in place at that time (2022)—perhaps there was something in place, but it had no real efficiency whatsoever.

    So, it’s absolutely possible that this could happen to any MDPI journal, just a matter of chance.

  3. @B. Essie, I agree with @Eva on the issue of common sense when it comes to plagiarism. I too was not educated about plagiarism until I submitted a paper to a conference. The editor replied pointing out that the work was plagiarized. I had to then research to educate myself on what really constitutes plagiarism.

    However, in the case of the authors of the article under discussion, they could not be excused for paraphrasing and resubmitting the same article. They ought to have educated themselves on what is/not plagiarism.

  4. Surely it is well-known by now that MDPI is a fringe, profit-maximising predatory publisher that specialises in multiple “special issues” with minimal quality control and editorial oversight. This is a case of “caveat emptor”. There is now a well-established coterie of fringe publishers where plagiarism, paper mills, authorships for sale, citation circles are rife and anybody who gets involved with these publishers either as an author or editor has just not exercised due diligence (or, in the case of the less ethical, is “on the make”). There’s an industry of fringe publishing that is undermining the integrity of the entire science enterprise and people need to “wise up”. There is simply no excuse any longer.

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