If authors duplicate portions of their own work in multiple papers — such as descriptions of methods, a boilerplate background to their field, etc. — should that be considered misconduct? Of course, to many journals, duplication — also known as “self-plagiarism” is a retractable offense. A recent letter to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) from … Continue reading Poll: Is duplication misconduct?
A PLOS ONE paper about chronic pain plagiarized from multiple sources — 17, in fact. According to the retraction notice released by the journal last week, the paper contains “extensive verbatim use of text from other sources.” How did this make it past the editors? The journal published the paper in 2012 — before it began screening … Continue reading PLOS ONE paper plagiarized from 17 articles — yes, 17
A court in Finland has ruled that universities must go through the court system if they want to revoke a degree. In a precedent-setting decision, a body dubbed “the court of last resort in administrative cases” in Finland ruled that universities must apply to them to revoke someone’s degree. The ruling, which occurred this month, took place after a … Continue reading Finnish universities must now use courts to revoke degrees
Citation omissions in an economics preprint have set off a wave of recrimination and speculation on a widely read economics discussion board. Commenters accuse the authors of purposely omitting citations that would have undermined the paper’s claims to novelty and contributions to the field, leveling acrimony and personal attacks. Economists Petra Persson at Stanford and … Continue reading Economists go wild over overlooked citations in preprint on prenatal stress
An author is prepared to sue Elsevier if it doesn’t un-retract his paper. Computational Materials Science published two papers by the same author just eight months apart; nearly four years later, the journal pulled one for duplication. Author Masoud Panjepour, affiliated with Isfahan University of Technology in Iran, told us that he is working with a lawyer to negotiate a … Continue reading Author threatens to sue Elsevier if paper remains retracted
This case of plagiarism is a little weirder than usual. A paper has been retracted from Semigroup Forum because it includes material taken from another researcher’s manuscript — which was handwritten. In fact, the same journal had already published a paper by the plagiarized researcher, also based on the same manuscript. The journal editor told us that, although the two papers … Continue reading Paper plagiarizes from handwritten manuscript
The week at Retraction Watch featured a discussion of why science has bigger problems than retractions, and a look at what happened when a journal decided to get tough on plagiarism. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
“Eerily familiar”: That’s how Serdar Sayan of TOBB University of Economics and Technology in Turkey says it felt to read a submission to the Scandinavian Journal of Economics, after the journal asked him to review the manuscript. It turns out, it was Sayan’s paper, word for word, equation for equation, down to the last punctuation … Continue reading Ever been asked to review your own paper? This economist was
Editors have published a notice to let readers know why they’re not retracting a couple of papers. One paper examined whether the results of CT scans could be used to stage patients with uterine carcinoma; the other considered whether CT scans could be used to predict overall survival in uterine carcinoma. Both papers — by researchers at … Continue reading Non-retraction notice: Editors explain why two similar papers aren’t redundant
Metals and Materials International has retracted three papers from one author, due to suspicions of plagiarism and authorship issues. The three papers have one thing in common — the same lead author, Reza Haghayeghi from the Islamic Azad University in Tehran, Iran. The retraction notices — all released in March, 2016 — lead with the following: