I once had a large chunk of one of my conference papers plagiarized in another paper.

I remember when reading the other paper I was thinking, “This paper is making excellent points. I couldn’t have said it better myself.” After reading a bit further, it dawned on me, “Wait. I did say this myself!” It turns out that about 10% of the paper, mostly introductory material, was taken nearly verbatim from one of my papers. Looking through the paper, I found passages that came from another paper (by another author).

See "Another researcher has claimed my publications" in https://help.researchgate.net/hc/en-us/articles/14292798510993-Authorship for instructions how to correct this. But unlike this help page suggests, most probably it was not the other author himself who wrongly claimed authorship, but ResearchGate's automatic algorithm wrongly identified him as the author and assigned your publication to his profile. Unfortunately, this is a frequent problem in ResearchGate in case of similar names.

Unethical plagiarism is the use of, or theft, of someone else’s ideas, writing, or academic work without proper attribution. Simply put, unethical plagiarism can be avoided by clearly stating what work is your own and what work has been done by others. But sometimes it can be difficult to really know what counts as unethical plagiarism and what does not, and whether it is really a big deal. So in this article we are going to talk about what plagiarism is exactly and why it is unethical and should be avoided at all costs.What’s so unethical about plagiarism anyway? If you copy someone’s ideas in your research paper and submit it for a class, does anyone really get hurt? Will anyone know? The answers to those questions are yes and yes. Plagiarism is, simply put, theft. The same ethics that apply to stealing a car or a handbag apply to stealing someone else’s ideas or words. Any student or researcher knows that research and writing are very hard work, and to have someone else take credit for that work is quite painful. As you advance in your career, someone else stealing your ideas can have serious consequences for your ability to publish and progress.

Plagiarism is also unethical because it involves fraud and deception. You are not only stealing, you are pretending that you performed work that you did not. You are attempting to take credit for someone else’s hard work and deceive others into believing that you did that work. This disrespects your peers and colleagues as well. Plagiarizing someone else’s work shows a great disregard for the consequences that person might suffer from having their work stolen. In addition, it makes you into a thief, no different from someone who has stolen a car, a handbag, or some other physical item. While you may be thinking that self-plagiarism is not unethical because you cannot steal from yourself, in fact self-plagiarism is unethical because you are engaging in fraud and deception by pretending that previous work you already did is new. If you published that work, depending on who owns the copyright, it is possible to argue that you are also committing theft even if it is your own writing and ideas.

If you discover that one of your published articles has been incorrectly linked to another profile, which may involve unethical practices, you should immediately contact the platform or publisher where the article is listed, providing evidence of your authorship and requesting the necessary corrections. Additionally, you may reach out to the person whose profile it was linked to, if appropriate, to clarify the situation. Ensure you document all communications and keep a record of the evidence in case further action is required.