The journal Bioinformation has retracted a 2009 article by a group of researchers from India.
The paper was titled “Targeting pseudoknots in H5N1 hemagglutinin using designed aptamers,” and was written by Priyanka Dhar, Sayak Ganguli and Abhijit Datta, of the Defence Institute of High Altitude Research and the Bioinformatics Centre at Presidency College in Kolkata.
Under a heading, “Reader Feedback”, the retraction notice states:
The article “Targeting pseudo knots in H5N1 hemagglutinin using designed aptamers,” Dhar et al. Bioinformation 2009 Oct. 25; 4(5):193-6 [1], has sections of text that were taken directly from the article “Pseudoknots: RNA structures with diverse functions” by Staple and Butcher, PLos Biol. 2005 June 3(6):e213 [2].
Below that follows: “Decision”:
Investigation suggests that a significant portion (highlighted in yellow shade) of text in Discussion are plagiarized as stated above. This is clearly in violation of “ethics in publishing”. Therefore, it is decided to retract this article from Bioinformation as on December 25, 2013. Thus, this information is brought to the notice of the following authors
Priyanka Dhar
Sayak Ganguli
Abhijit Datta
I have two queries about thei retraction notice:
a) Where exactly is this “text in yellow”? This needs to be shown. No files on PubMed contain this yellow text.
b) Whose “ethics in publishing” exactly where they following? I would be curious to learn about how much plagiarism is allowed before it is considered to be “plagiarism”.