I have just had a look out of curiosity, and it is shocking indeed. Only very minor and very few wording changes can be found in the 2010 paper as compared with the first one. The plagiarised author should be made aware of this, and a retraction should be required.

Although not to such a scandalous extent, I have occasionally suffered plagiarism myself, and t is certainly not nice. Above all other considerations, however, it is a highly unethical issue, and a serious and probably growing problem for the scientific community. I believe that some journals check all submitted manuscripts, or at least a randomly chosen part of them, for similarity to other publications through iThenticate. Maybe this practice should be generalised to all journals wishing to adhere to high quality standards. It is sad indeed that scientists in general have to be placed under suspicion, but it may be the only option to avoid such occurrences.

Additionally, I believe that a retraction is very "cheap" as a punishment in such cases. Given the harmful effects of such practices on the "honest" scientific community, stronger and longer-lasting extra measures should be considered and applied when possible.

I have just had a look out of curiosity, and it is shocking indeed. Only very minor and very few wording changes can be found in the 2010 paper as compared with the first one. The plagiarised author should be made aware of this, and a retraction should be required.

Although not to such a scandalous extent, I have occasionally suffered plagiarism myself, and t is certainly not nice. Above all other considerations, however, it is a highly unethical issue, and a serious and probably growing problem for the scientific community. I believe that some journals check all submitted manuscripts, or at least a randomly chosen part of them, for similarity to other publications through iThenticate. Maybe this practice should be generalised to all journals wishing to adhere to high quality standards. It is sad indeed that scientists in general have to be placed under suspicion, but it may be the only option to avoid such occurrences.

Additionally, I believe that a retraction is very "cheap" as a punishment in such cases. Given the harmful effects of such practices on the "honest" scientific community, stronger and longer-lasting extra measures should be considered and applied when possible.

I've sent a message to the author through research gate. Hope some measures will be taken to avoid such woefully practices in the future. Thanks for the post.

Interesting! Perhaps you will find these two articles more shocking!

First one (1998): www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10048501

Second one (2008): http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/5/1/27/

First read the abstract of both two articles and then check full texts.

BMC eventually retracted the article by Bibi Z (http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/11/1/11). But the question remains unanswered how at the first place the second piece could get accepted and be published!

The second paper (2010) is a case of plagiarism.

Inform the open journal editor in the first instance. See

http://www.ifrj.upm.edu.my/contact_us.html

Inform the original (2007) author as a courtesy so he knows what is going on.

By the way, I don't think open access model should be criticized in these cases. Rather, you can criticize the editorial board, the reviewers and certainly the author at the first place.

I have informed the IFRJ editor a couple of hours ago. I could not inform the author of the original 2007 paper, as I could not find her e-mail address, but I believe Marco already sent a message to her via ResearchGate (see above)

As a matter of fact both journals are open access, so I'm not criticizing the open access model per se. I understand that one journal (2007 paper) is state-funded, so I don't think the authors pay publication fees; I'm not sure whether the second (2010) charges for publication fees. No model or set of rules is perfect, any model is fine if people are honest, any model will fail if people are dishonest. However, a journal that charges publication fees gets more money if more papers are published; a subscription-based journal earns the same money no matter how many downloads. Somehow I feel it may sometimes make a difference and a double-check by the scientific community will do no harm....

By the way, I've informed both editors and Scopus; Marco has informed the author of the first paper. I think the author of the second paper already knows since 2010.

Cheers

Francesca

The editor of the second journal (2010) did no homework. A simple Google would have sufficed.

Francesca D'Acunzo

I have checked and it states: "International Food Research Journal carries no page charge." http://www.ifrj.upm.edu.my/guide.html

You said: "...a journal that charges publication fees gets more money if more papers are published..." No objection. But I think most of the reputed publishers don't compromise with quality. A recent paper published in Science criticized OA journals for accepting vague, false papers though. Still I have faith in OA model and as you said i do second with your opinion that the people need to be honest.

Scientific misconduct happens. Even Nature, Science, Physical Review published falsified data (see this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal). So, the publishers should learn from their previous experience and peer reviewers should take more responsibility.

At this point I advocate for "Open Peer Review". If the reviewers' comments were open we would be able to have a look who were the reviewers and transparency could be ensured.

I'm not sure "no page charge" means "no publication fees". It would be inetersting to try and publish on IFRJ and see what happens. Schon's scandal was a very juicy one, and a lot of money was involved. It just proves that a second check from the community, with no conflict of interest is best.

Perhaps you are right about "publication charge" and "page charge". In fact Jan H Schön's scientific misconduct was revealed by a second check from the community (several investigations). But it happened after those papers were published.

That's a good idea to submit a manuscript in IFRJ and watch what happens! If you do so, please let us know.

Regards.

Riaz

I received an answer from IFRJ approximately one hour ago. It textually reads:

"Dear Isabel,

Thank you fr the information

Best regards"

Let's see what happens next...

Dear Isabel Lara

Was the answer exactly as you quoted here? I am actually curious about the use of "fr"!! That is odd!!

Regards.

Yes, it was a "copy-paste".

Copy-paste not copy-shake-paste!

That is really pathetic! Perhaps the person who did communicate with you in this regard forgot that s/he is communicating with an academician, someone who is professional, not with his/her Facebook friend. The use of "fr" instead of "for" indicates the journal is operated by some unprofessional people. However, this could be a typo though!!

Regards.

No comment, there is no chance to defence against these practices. (Is it?)

Thanks to Mr Marco Campus and Mr Ian Kennedy for their notice regarding to plagiarism of my review published in Czech J. of Food Sci. 2007 Vol. 25, No. 5: 231–242. No comment, I am sorry about it...

I would have thought that of everyone involved in this case, Jana, you are not the one who has to apologise

Dear Jana,

while the editor of IFRJ replied to my email the same nonsensical way as to Lara's, the editor of Czech J. of Food Sci. has not replied to me yet. Did you try to contact him? Are you aware of any actions he may take?

@Jana: No, you are not sorry. Be proud.

Dear scholars,

A similar case happened in 2007 between two renowned review journals and the final verdict was retraction of the paper.

The way out: nowadays there are some software helping editors to find out such practices.

Anyone can find out where taking sentences by using iThenticate programs. especially reviews and editors

Those engaged in plagiarism should be blacklisted (by journals, employers, etc). The matter should be brought to the attention of the employer or boss of the culprit.

There is an excellent program Plagiarism Detector. First 10 times it is free so it should be considered for such things.

There is such an issue going on in my institution and unfortunately, the person who called attention to the plagiarized work is being put under pressure to keep quiet. Sad! Meanwhile , as said by others here, a simple Google check could show up such plagiarized work. The iThenticte is also a good tool for editors and reviews definitely.

I'm sorry to hear that: Being pressurized to keep silent about plagiarism is outrageous and I infer that there are a cohort of people who know about this, not just the person who committed the act of plagiarism.

If only we could devise an anonymous alerting procedure to help people in your colleague's position......On researchgate, perhaps............

It is a sad news indeed , I hope internationally there is a wise solution as I have heard a lot of such plagiarism happened and maybe they who did it have a very low conciouness about plagiarism or very weak lawenforcement on copyright in their country.. Maybe International organisations could assist the scientists especially in developing countries to improve their awareness and knowledge of plagiarism.

Maybe the most simple and easy solution is to use plagiarism detector program for every manuscript that reviewers marked as acceptable for revision or publication. Therefore it is not necessary to use it for every manuscript

It is sad and bad news

Hello everyone. Since I raised the question on these two papers, this is how the people involved responded:

1) the first victim editor (czech j. food sci.) did not reply to my email

2) the negligent editor (int j food res) replied in a way that I do not consider satisfactory : "Dear Francesca,Thank you for the information. Best regards Son Radu

Editor"

3) The plagiarized Author feels sorry. Personally, I don't get it. There may be some misunderstanding here.

4) Scopus replied as follows: "As you have already alerted the journal editors they will take appropriate action about it as soon as the plagiarism will be confirmed. If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me."

Each one of these four reactions can be translated into one sentence: "I don't care".

Do we?

Francesca

@Adetoun Oyelude, I am sorry to say, that we (Zoology and Ecology, publisher Taylor and Francis) also had some misunderstanding with Ibadan University. Such things, when comes to wider auditorium, will close possibilities for your researchers to publish their results. Thus, "keep quiet" is not the solution.

As for the case asked in the question:

some journals do not have access to iThenticate. If Google is enough, then journal (Editor, reviewers, board) is blamed.

I was shocked while comparing both papers. It is definitely violation of intellectual property rights. This is very bad behavior. Specially, editor of the particular journal should answer for that because he is the person who takes sole responsibility for what they published through their journal.

Thanks for the eye opening question.

Dear Francesca

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE - http://publicationethics.org/about) might be the place where to raise this issue. Hopefully you will get a better answer from them. At least a notice of dual publication should be published.

Hello, Goran. I disagree with you. I think plagiarism detection should be run on ALL papers submitted. Why waste time reviewing a paper if it has been copied from someone else? All papers must be screened beforehand. Then, if plagiarism is detected, then they should be immediately rejected.

Okey you're right. Then, the most eary protocol should be incorporated in the online submission system. When the plagiarism is detected the manuscript is rejected. Then the whole system is not losing time and resources on such work.

Also My opinion is that there are two types of plagiarisms. One is serious when others' results are used and another is when some paragraphs are copy pasted. Sometimes I find interesting paragraph of several sentences that are so good staing something universal that cannot be someone's 'property'. I would not punish such things copied from another article as serious plagiarism.

Oh! I have roughly read them through. Its so sad to see this kind of thing. Its really shocking. We can't blame the journals anyway, as it is sometime realy dificult to detect such kind of things. But as authors, we need to encourage one another, especially young researchers, to avoid this unprofessionalism

@Goran, I'm surprised at your description "serious plagiarism"? how do you distinguish two types of plagiarism? the use of copy and paste is discouraged at school: why does it become permissible to steal other people's work when you leave school? In submitting manuscripts to journals authors are entering a contract in which they are assuring the journal that the entire manuscript is their own work, and they give credit to others through citation.

the papers under discussion in this thread highlight a particularly blatant case of plagiarism, as comparing the texts side by side shows that the wording of the original paper has been altered slightly but in all material respects the second is identical. but in professional and ethical terms, what is the difference between submitting a manuscript that has been doctored in this way with superficial changes to title and keywords, and pasting a paragraph - unacknowledged - into your own paper?

It is difficult to say who was the first person that connected several sentences.. Serious plagiarism is when you steal others' results. If one say that 'there are 3 types of clouds...' then it is not plagiarism if someone say that again.. but if someone steals others' results.. well that is the problem. That was my point.

I don't think plagiarism is limited to the re-use of results, perhaps this is where our views diverge. If i was submitting a paper to a journal on on plagiarism, i could copy your words into it thus:

........my words my words my words. It is difficult to say who was the first person that connected several sentences.. Serious plagiarism is when you steal others' results. ........my words my words my words.....

Or, i could acknowledge you:

........my words my words my words. "It is difficult to say who was the first person that connected several sentences.. Serious plagiarism is when you steal others' results" (Augustin, 2014). my words my words my words.....

The second gives credit to the original author (in this case, you) who created that precise formulation. The first doesn't, I am using your words but passing them off as my own, and that's theft... that's plagiarism.

The authors have made copy including the abstract!!!!.....I agree, in that examples have plagiarism, this very anti-ethic but I agree that some terms, in english are very similar, too..... In the second example, the authors have made copy with all the words, in all forms and verbs conjugated....this is lamentable.

And the first example (2007) wasn't cited neither on the second one (2010).

There's a clue in the affiliation too - even the Finnish affiliation is not spelt correctly in the 2010 paper. Something very odd. How common is this in 'better' journals?

That was my point. As in music law, there are several seconds that can be the same and do not influence on the song, but large amounts or complete copy paste is plagiarism and measures should be taken

A recent article of interest?

Http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/21/rise-plagiarism-internet-shia-labeouf

Goran - taking any part of a paper and copying and pasting it, without making any effort to put your own interpretation on it is poor. Yes, there will always be some parts of sentences that are very similar when describing the same thing, but what concerns me about what you are mentioning, is the 'copy-paste' action. You are taking someone else's work, and putting it in your own, under your name, without it having the chance to be processed in your head. The first problem is that it is a slippery slope (a phrase becomes a sentence, and the suddenly a whole paragraph), and the second is that this approach gives no chance for a diversity in describing a similar phenomenon. Of course, a citation acknowledging the contribution of someone else's work to your own solves the whole problem...

Louwrens - this brings up an issue about authorship. IMO & according to international published guidelines, there are set criteria & responsibilities to be borne by all those cited as authors of a paper (see RG discussions). Lots of supervisors however, take author 'credit' for students work because they mentored them, supervised them, or acted as corresponding author. One of the stipulated responsibilities of authorship is affirming that the work is genuine, so it could be said that all of the cited authors are equally responsible, even if they were not aware of the plagiarism.

Various RG discussions are talking about who to write with, collaboration etc, and I think that those in a supervisory capacity seriously need to revise their approach to what 'supervising' entails for student publication; whether they fulfil the published criteria for authorship; and what risks they face if (as noted in your experience) a co-author commits an academic offence such as plagiarism.

Aria - I think this question is not about 'how do you compare two papers', but rather a polite way of saying look at this shocking example of blatant plagiarism and tell me what you think ... I may have got it wrong though as I am clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer - your lesson on comparative analysis went over my head after the first few (well constructed) sentences :-P

I always had a feeling that copying and plagiarizing are two different things. Here is an example of that! This is a copy, and not a plagiarized version. It is a shame that such things too are done after all.

I agree with hemanta

Hemanta - Goran: as I read the papers, the authors of the second paper are passing the work of others off as their own without meaningful change, accreditation or re-contexting. This is a lie (as it has been previously published by others), and it is this attempted deception that makes it plagiarism.

If they had reproduced the text in a wider context & not tried to pass it off as their own creation, then I might call it copying. IMO, the act of attempting publication makes it academically dishonest.

I have to second Nicholas here - how are you guys differentiating between copying and plagiarising? As suggested earlier, citing is fine, but copying is slipping on the wrong side towards plagiarism. If you must copy someone else's description of something, just cite them and that's acceptable practice. But to copy someone else's work, idea or concept in your publication, and not cite the source, is dishonest. Same goes for photos in presentations - if you were a photographer and took a nice photo, which people started using their lectures because they'd found it on Google Images, and your work was not acknowledged, you'd be annoyed wouldn't you?

I agree

copying others' results is plagiarism. Copying text is not plagiarism

Goran - you are mistaken. Copying text is plagiarism indeed. I happened to find the introduction to one of my papers "copypasted" as the introduction to someone else 's paper. It was MY text, with my very words and my ideas, published therein as if it was someone else's work. Results were their own, but it WAS plagiarism. Think about it; it is the same thing as with the photos in Google images (see Alastair's post).

Taking this reasoning to the extreme, if copying text is not plagiarism, then copying a whole review (in which usually no results of one's own are published) would also not be plagiarism. Therefore, the case of plagiarism which originated this thread would not exist as such.

Did you know the attached study? It is (sadly) funny and illustrative.

Do you think the situation it depicts can have anything to do with these plagiarism issues? What is your opinion?

Thanks Isabel - that was an illuminating article! I suspect that this may come into play in terms of journals checking the quality, but does not excuse the fact that (allegedly) some scientists have used someone else's work in their own name. As a digression, I think the development of the open access model is an excellent example of the free-market at work. The ideal is fantastic, but without strong controls and oversight, it ends up being exploitative.

Isabel - great paper & I guess we now have a good idea of the sales market for the Emperors New Clothes. If you 'talk the talk', you have to 'walk the walk'.

@Isabel, thanks!

you were spot on to say that it's funny but in a sad way. or a Grace Groovy way.

reminiscent of the Sokal case in the social and cultural sciences (sic). whether or not the author has an agenda re Open Access, a motivation unavailable to Sokal, the reports back from each journal are shocking.

Oh, well, I had no idea about the Sokal case! I just made a Google search to find out, and it is also very remarkable.

I can not avoid the feeling that these things are contributing to the devaluation of published research in general. How can honest, "genuine" research be easily distinguished from junk papers? All of them have been accepted for publication. Selection commissions for tenure or for project funding, for instance, will have to have a Master's degree on these topics...

Hi Isabel,

someone will have read your post and started to draft a project proposal.....

Again I must confirm that we are thinking in the same direction. plagiarism is when you copy something especially results. But where is the limit when several same sentences become plagiarism. The same thing as in chess. There are many combinations but are LIMITED. As in music, several notes or tones do not make plagiarism and because it brings money (in music) it is strictly defined. In writing it is not. We think similarly but maybe our limits are different. In bone drilling i found more than 10 articles with the same introduction. When you are dealing with the some extremely specific subject there is no space for significantly different descriptions. Again i repeat copy paste is not allowed of course.

Best regards to you all.

Goran - I think I know where you are coming from but in the context of publishing academic or scientific research, it is the intent that matters. Even in your example of 10 articles on bone drilling that have the same introduction (good if you can give references for these): if the authors intent was to publish new perspectives or information on a subject, then even a similar introduction shows either a) a serious lack of research depth and validity, or b) a serious lack of imagination and linguistic application - how could 10 different studies have identical backgrounds and contexts, and how would these not have been reliant (at least to some extent) on the angle being taken in the presented study? If they are presenting something that is new & attributable to them, then to use someone else's work in this way is dishonest (:. plagiarism).

There are always going to be phrases or part-sentences that have occurred before (not every one of our thoughts or constructions can be original), and I think this is the limitation to which you refer. Despite this however, even if authors are echoing a sentiment that has been previously expressed by others, it is their duty to at least paraphrase the point, or if it is a key phrasing or point, to cite it in the normal way.

Academic writing & scientific study are very complex areas and place big responsibilities on those who undertake them. As such, they take time and demand careful consideration. I think the 'pressure to publish' is partly responsible for this, together with so much kudos being placed on 'publication'. There are also other ways to make significant contributions to our fields, so I hope we can reach a point where we can value all forms of evidence (someone else first wrote these last 4 words, but I think it is a good term, I am expressing it in an informal setting ... and paraphrasing it would be a token gesture of avoiding copying or plagiarism) - nothing dishonest about it ;-)

@Isabel, your post is very good......and I finished the lecture with a doubt: how make to choice of an open journal access of quality?

Copying without proper attribution and passing the material--whether results or otherwise--as one's own is plagiarism. It is very sad that this unethical practice is being committed by academics. 'Publish or perish' is never an excuse to plagiarize.

Finally good news! I am glad to know that some action seems to have been taken by the journal in which the plagiarised paper was published. They did not seem to care much at the beginning (see early posts).

Hats off to Paul Walsh at the University of Cambridge for his thorough research, and for following up items in a bibliography, which have led to this discovery:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/zygmunt-bauman-rebuffs-plagiarism-accusation/2012405.article

I don't think that the "eminence" of Bauman excuses these practices, as the reaction of other scholars makes clear.

Ah, if there are 10 papers with the same introductions, then 9 of these are plagiats! I can understand, that it is not possible to make every sentence different by 100%, if the same sources are cited, but for this reason one may use "citation" (source) format - then even programs checking for plagiarism should give easy go. Of course, amount of such congruences must be limited.

Regardless of being 'old school', I think it entirely reasonable that academics from top-to-bottom adopt the basic tenant of academic honesty that is the basis of plagiarism ethics. Missing the odd citation or under-paraphrasing conceptual points by students may be given a degree of leniency in academic offences panels, but if it gets through a publisher, then regardless of level, it is increasingly likely to be picked up at a later date. I think that whilst we can all make mistakes, those who do so on a consistent and significant level, do so at their own risk.

mea culpa, it was Peter Walsh, not Paul Walsh, at Cambridge, who identified Bauman's sharp practices.

credit where credit is due!

Hello, everyone. I'm glad the International Food Research Journal is responding appropriately. I wish they had replied to Lara's and my initial email in a more pleasant and thorough way in the first place (see earliest posts). Apparently, this discussion on Researchgate put some extra pressure on them. Of course, I would like to point out that I did not intend to attack a single Journal or a single Author, but rather to stress out the danger of the "publish or perish" approach combined with the tendency to "debone and demarrow" (R. Bradbury, Author's introduction or coda - I don't remember - to Farenheit 451) a Researcher's work into indeces and scores. Just press "like" and you'll raise mine..... :D

All this has been very, very interesting, and I thank you all for sharing so much food for thought.

Francesca

As a journal editor I have become aware of this problem recently, not with other authors using previously published work, but with authors trying to publish their own work in two different journals. I find a quick Google search of the title can be a great help and in the last few months have found 5 papers submitted to our journal that are already published. I think 'open acess' has alot to answer for - it has made it easier for authors to be less scrupulous and difficult for journal editors to be thorough. Vigilence is necessary.

Kieran

It is quite sad that this happened but then at the end of the day it is up to us as researchers to be people of integrity!!

Kieran: is it 'open access' that is to blame, or those who work on both sides of the publishing divide? Authors have a blanket responsibility to ensure their own practice is ethical and based on a global collective interpretation of integrity (regardless of personal or ethno-centric differences). Likewise, journal editors have taken on a responsibility, so although they face an un-enviable and difficult task, as you point out, they have a duty of vigilance.

Journals already pay a public price when articles such as this slip through the net. What is the deterrent though for these deliberately rogue 'authors' - a central name and shame site - three strikes and you're globally black-listed; contacting their institutions; contacting the original authors ... ?

I think Molly raises a basic point that we can often refer to when it may be tempting to make our roles as authors looking for publication opportunities, or editors facing a mountain of possible submissions (and very little time or resources to deal with them) a little 'easier' ... quality and integrity should not suffer for convenience.

Perhaps in such situations as we now face, there is a need for OA or small journals not only to have voluntary peer reviewers, but also voluntary quality reviewers who would run all potential submissions through a set of predefined filters. As you say, even a quick Google search can be useful and this is freely accessible to all, but there are also lots of free plagiarism checkers that volunteers could be directed to. It may help reduce embarrassing instances such as this :-)

Great example to show students as to why to question research papers even in refereed journals. Also makes one look closely at the refereeing process.

Not all academics are intellectually honest.

Publicity such as this should be a partial deterrent.

I am glad to see, that thread is still alive - we are serious people, and do not favour plagiarism, then. This is really nice.

What about ISI Master list and WoS list of Thomson Reuters? I think, these journals are already proven their standard?

Or, alternatively, you may use Index Copernicus for europe?

Hopefully RW or the journal will do the deed - the important thing is that a wrong has been righted.