Is this the new business ethics? In January, we reported on a paper retracted from the Journal of Business Ethics for duplication. That earned the author a five-year publishing ban. This week, we learned of a case of plagiarism in another journal in the field, the Journal of Academic and Business Ethics. Here’s an email … Continue reading Oh, the irony: Business ethics journal paper retracted for plagiarism
Sometimes, the headlines just write themselves. Two scientists in India have had a paper retracted after it became clear they had plagiarized a study by a Swedish researcher. Here’s the notice for “A conceptual model of people’s approach to sanitation,” from Science of the Total Environment:
Annette Schavan, the German minister for education and research, has had her PhD revoked by the University of Dusseldorf following an investigation into alleged plagiarism. Der Spiegel reports:
A review paper published in the Serbian journal Medicinski pregled (Medical review) has been retracted for plagiarising a 2002 paper published in the Croatian Journal of Infection (or Infektološki glasnik). The retraction note (in Serbian only) in the current issue (vol. 65, issue 11-12) of Medicinski pregled, published by the Society of Physicians of Vojvodina of the … Continue reading Lyme disease diagnostics review retracted for plagiarism
Authors of a 2012 article in the Journal of Animal Science and Biotechnology have retracted it for plagiarism. The article, “Progress of genome wide association study in domestic animals,” came from a group of chicken geneticists in China affiliated with the Ministry of Agriculture in Harbin and Northeast Agricultural University, in the same city. According … Continue reading Authors “regretfully” retract genomics paper for plagiarism
An anti-terrorism researcher at the University of Southern Denmark has had a number of papers in conference proceedings retracted for plagiarism. Debora Weber-Wulff, who has researched plagiarism for a decade, reports on her blog Copy, Shake, and Paste that eight papers by Nasrullah Memon have been retracted after the Vroniplag website revealed similarities between his … Continue reading Eight papers by anti-terrorism professor retracted for plagiarism
A group engineers from Iran and Singapore have been forced to retract a paper in the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials after the article was found to contain incidents of plagiarism. The article, “Magnetic properties of iron-based soft magnetic composites with MgO coating obtained by sol–gel method,” appeared in April 2010. Sometime later (we’re … Continue reading Magnets paper fails to stick as plagiarism leads to retraction
The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) has sanctioned a former Texas Tech postdoc for using data that had actually been generated before he joined the lab in a paper as if it were new. Shuang-Qing Zhang, according to today’s announcement by the ORI, “engaged in research misconduct by the falsification and fabrication of plagiarized data” … Continue reading ORI sanctions former Texas Tech postdoc for falsification, fabrication, plagiarism
Plant Physiology and Biochemistry has an amusing retraction notice this month that underscores the perils of allowing authors to come up with their own statements. The paper, “Molecular strategies in manipulation of the starch synthesis pathway for improving storage starch content in plants (review and prospect for increasing storage starch synthesis),” came from a group … Continue reading “Some sentences…are directly taken from other papers, which could be viewed as a form of plagiarism”
An open letter to the Serbian science ministry – coinciding with the new government’s first 100 days in office – and an accompanying petition signed by 850 scientists so far, makes for pretty dim reading on the state of research ethics in Serbia. The systematic and apparently state-endorsed practice of artificially boosting one’s ratings in … Continue reading Serbian scientists decry systematic plagiarism, predatory publishing