I recently became aware of this paper, which plagiarized one of my previous publications.
I left a comment on the RG article, contacted the authors of the paper and the editor @Alexei V. Dmitriev who replied, "I did not find too much plagiarism in the paper in the sense of “text much”. The main problem I found was that the authors did not cite the original technique of Cushley and Noel (2014) as well as other relevant papers. Unfortunately, this happens sometimes because of reviewer oversight."
It seems that the editors are not taking this complaint seriously. I would have expected the editors to be horrified that they published plagiarized materials and remove the paper. What else can I do? I have also informed Wiley, the publisher of the original Radio Science paper I wrote, since this clearly violates the copy-rights to the original paper:
Cushley, A. C., and J.-M. Noël (2014), Ionospheric tomography using ADS-B signals, Radio Sci., 49, 549–563,doi:10.1002/2013RS005354
What else can I do?
UPDATE:
The authors of the paper are cooperating and I was contacted by the Editorial Board of the paper to inform me they requested to revise or retract their paper. See my comment below for the course taken to resolve this issue.
See these previous discussions:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_report_complete_article_plagiarism_in_the_academic_world/1
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_should_i_do_if_find_my_paper_plagiarized/1
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_to_do_when_confronted_with_plagiarism/1
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_to_do_when_confronted_with_plagiarism2/1
If you discover that someone has plagiarized your journal article, it is essential to take prompt and appropriate actions to address the situation. Plagiarism is a serious ethical violation and can have severe consequences for the plagiarizer.
Here are the steps you should consider taking:
Remember, addressing plagiarism can be a complex and sensitive matter, so it's crucial to handle the situation professionally and follow appropriate procedures. Taking action against plagiarism not only protects your work but also helps to uphold academic integrity and ethical standards in the research community.
UPDATE:
I have been informed by the editorial board of MDPI that they have been contacted by the authors to revise or retract their paper. I have removed the title of the article above since the authors are being cooperative. The course of action that I took is as follows:
1) Posted a comment for the paper on Research Gate stating what relevant works the paper was based on and should have cited. Thank you to my colleagues that say my comment and recommended it to show their support.
2) Contacted my co-authors to inform them of the situation, get their advice and let them know I would be taking care of the issue.
3) Contacted the editor of the paper. In this case they acknowledged the plagiarism, but did not take any action, but said that it was my right to write a denial or protest paper (which I considered as a possible step if all else failed).
4) Contacted the corresponding author and cc'd co-authors by email. Keep it professional but clearly outlined that it was no OK to plagiarize my work and what my expectations were. I asked them to contact the editor of their paper and either retract it or revise it to acknowledge my work. I also clearly laid out which relevant works they should cite in the future if they continued building on this work.
5) Contacted the MDPI Research Integrity and Publication Ethics Team and outlined from their own documentation how the article plagiarized my work. I quoted their own policies, "plagiarism is not acceptable in MDPI journals. Plagiarism includes copying text, ideas, images, or data from another source, even from your own publications, without giving credit to the original source.....Such articles threaten the integrity of scientific records and need to be retracted". I also outlined what I would like to be done, "revise the paper to cite appropriately or retract the paper.
6) I informed the publisher (Wiley) of my paper with clear examples so that they could investigate or pursue copyright infringement.
OUTCOME:
I was informed by the MDPI Editorial Board that they had been contacted by the authors to revise or retract the paper. I will update this comment once I see the paper has either been revised or removed.
Here are the steps you can take if you find that your work has been plagiarized:
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- Science topic
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- Publication