The flagship journal of the Royal Historical Society has retracted a paper positing that British and Canadian soldiers committed “scores” of prisoner executions against German forces during World War I. The move followed an investigation for plagiarism.
The article, written by historian Alex J. Kay of the University of Potsdam in Germany, was published online in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society in early February. On February 19, the co-editors of the journal received a complaint that Kay’s article shared similarities with a 2010 article by Brian Feltman, a historian at Georgia Southern University, in Statesboro.
The journal looked into the claims and identified several passages that “appeared to follow this source too closely in argument, content, and style, with insufficient acknowledgement,” according to a statement the Royal Historical Society shared with Retraction Watch. The group then shared the passages with external editors, who agreed with the initial findings.
“Following a detailed review, the editors, together with three independent and experienced journal editors, identified passages of the article which followed this source too closely in argument, content and style, without sufficient acknowledgement/reference,” the August 29 retraction notice states. Kay “strongly disagrees with this decision,” the notice adds.
Transactions pointed to the “similarities in sentence structure, phrasing and interpretation” in various passages. Kay told us these were “all descriptive in nature; they were neither analytical nor related to conclusions or hypotheses.”
Kay’s work claimed to be “the first study directly to compare the actions of the British and the Canadians, the Empire’s two largest armies on the western front,” he wrote in the published paper, and, unlike Feltman’s work, to draw upon unit diaries and after-action reports. Kay cited Feltman’s work throughout — seven times in the text itself, 12 times in the footnotes — and believes that the journal’s motive for retraction may be political.
“One senior colleague in Germany, far from being surprised by the journal’s actions, suggested immediately that it was likely a political decision due to the subject of British war crimes during either of the world wars still being a very touchy subject in the U.K.,” he said.
“The editors reject any suggestion that the retraction was political,” the Royal Historical Society’s statement reads.
Kay told us he learned of the complaint on April 1 in an email from the Royal Historical Society and Transactions, signed by the journal’s co-editors. The email included information on plagiarism as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics.
“Even Transactions’ own accusation didn’t make this claim,” Kay told us. He expected that, under COPE guidelines, the journal would have offered Kay the opportunity to correct the article. But Kay said the journal didn’t offer him the opportunity to make any corrections. “It was thus in breach of the guidelines it cited itself.”
Cambridge University Press, which publishes the journal, “maintains a fixed version of record for all the journals it publishes. Dr. Kay was informed that the only remedies available therefore were a separate correction or a retraction. The former was neither feasible nor appropriate in this case,” the Royal Historical Society said in its statement.
“Transactions never explained why this was,” Kay added.
The retraction notice also gave dual submission as a reason for retraction: “At the time of its submission to Transactions, the article was submitted to another journal, contrary to the declaration made by the author at the time of submission.” But Kay told us that he submitted his manuscript to Transactions only after having received no response to his follow-up message to the first journal.
The source of the original complaint requested anonymity and was not part of the journal’s investigation process, Transactions’ co-editors said.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
Interesting, and on the author’s claims of the “why” on the retraction.
I don’t know about Canada, but I am enough of a WWI history student to know the UK did indeed commit war crimes.