A pair of researchers in India has lost a paper in Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries for lifting chunks of text from other sources.
The article, “Advancements in morphometric differentiation: a review on stock identification among fish populations,” appeared in last March from scientists at the National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources in Lucknow.
According to the retraction notice:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief due to a violation of Springer’s Publishing Principles as part of the content of the article DOI 10.1007/s11160-012-9279-1 has been duplicated from different research papers. The authors apologize to the Editors and readers as well as the authors of the original papers.
Clearly, the journal here could have used a little help with morphometric differentiation. They certainly went out of their way to avoid using the word “plagiarism.”
Obligatory fish pun…
“I bet the authors are sorry they got cod plagiarizing.”
I couldn’t resist. There it goes, “hook, line and sinker”! I wonder if anyone is tracing the retracted papers, i.e., are authors whose papers have been retracted editing them once again and re-submnitting for re-publication elsewhere? In time, as the number of retractions increases, we are going to have to monitor this.
I bet you said that just for the halibut, didn’t you? 🙂
This paper turned out to be a red herring…
This was a whale of a mistake, let’s not be koi about it… (coy; intended sic)
One more. Am I the sole blogger who wonders why Springer would be avoiding the “P” word. If even the publisher is too afraid to vocalize the correct terminology, then what a lost case science is. The retraction notice is simply a transferral of responsibility from publisher to authors. I wonder if anyone has actually read the Springer’s Publishing Principles in detail? Finally, I would like to see the letter of apology offered by the authors, as claimed by the retraction notice. I am starting to see an irritatingly repetitive and standardized wording used by several publishers in the retraction notice, without any substance about the actual problem, as politically neutral as possible to avoid legal reproaches? This blog is an excellent op-perch-tuna-ty (opportunity) to get some responses from publishers directly.