What would happen if some paper is published in a main journal and the main idea is extracted from some other paper originally and previously published only online or on some secondary source.
What will happen if there is no reference to the original paper?
What the authors of the original paper can do to prove the original authorship and plagiarism?
What if the original paper is a preprint published only on Research gate? ( I understand there is no prove on the date of publishing on RSG)
Let me unify the answers given. I ignore the issue of copyright, because the question is about plagiarism.
Author A previews her draft paper on ResearchGate.
Author B independently(1) or dependently(2) uses the new ideas but he does not reference the new ideas.
Situation (1) may arise because he was completely unaware of the new ideas (e.g., he is not even a member of ResearchGate) and independently discovered the new ideas. People are working in parallel on hot topics. Remember too that search engines do not allow Author B or his Referees to search for ideas.
Situation (2) may arise because Author B was able to speed up or refine his ideas from a reading of Author A's draft, or simply claim them as his and pretend that he never read the draft paper on ResearchGate.
I think that RG support might be able to certify the date that Author A published.
{RG please note also the opportunity for you to provide an add-on service to customers which proves that Author B first read Author A's draft on a particular date}
In any case, Author B is apparently guilty of inadvertent(1) or advertent(2) plagiarism. The first recourse for Author A is to write a letter to the editor of the journal, documenting the facts. The editor should at least publish Author A's letter of prior claim. Author B will be given an opportunity to retort.
I've seen such issues brought to either a professional association, like National Communication Association, or to a civil court for authorities to settle. Peers in an association can jeopardize the culprit's career and in civil court monetary fines can be imposed. The disciplining through a professional association is much faster, though it does not provide monetary compensation. Ottima domanda Vittorio!
Hi, it is a plagiarism to use an author's work without properly acknowledging the author.It is an offense.
If a case as narrated above happens, then we can assume that there are some loopholes in the system of paper publishing. Reputed journals publish research articles only after peer reviewing by a minimum of two independent referees. If the referees are active in their subject area, they would detect such cases of idea stealing. The original authors can write to the journal office and the institution of the authors for corrective action. A case of plagiarism as mentioned here, if proved, would be detrimental for the future of the perpetrators.
Hi,
There is no copyrights on ideas, so if you extract an idea from another paper, and develop it in your own way, it is not punishable, but if you are not referencing it, than it is not a nice practice. As to the proof of originality, there is always ways to prove it if a paper was published in any format.
depends on many factors:
- this may be plagiarism
- this may be self-plagiarism
- this may be OK
- and depends on what is "main journal" and what is the next journal you use. If the next journal is "the best open access journal of everything", then nothing will happen
Answer are not in agreement. May be I was not specific. Let me reformulate a case : Someone (author A) publishes some preprint on Research gate with some new and original ideas ( something that was overlooked by anyone in the community for 20 years) and submits the paper to some journal. After some months his paper is rejected and some other author (author B ) instead is able to publish a different paper applying the same new and original ideas in a major journal and obviously without giving any reference to the original paper. What can do author A? Is this plagiarism? in case it is what can do author A? Or as Avishag Gordon says since there is no copyright on ideas there is no plagiarism?
My concern is that at the moment everyone is checking plagiarism by some software that checks words without any consideration for the underlying concepts.
It is a good lesson about putting non-published priority materials online, I think.
When you give manuscript for review, it is documented who reviewed it (and declined) - if plagiarist is your reviewer, you may contact editor of the journal.
When your ideas are preprinted, but not published, there is no track who had chance to take them, right?
For example, look at Biogeosciences - every step before publication is documented, and manuscript has it's DoI, while presented for public discussion long before acception.
Linas Balciauskas I understand that putting non-published material online is what every physic scientist does on ARXIV . Are they all wrong?
I am biologist ... so cannot answer. But put a good unpublished idea in biology in the public... well, I would not do this.
If it is only the main idea, there would be no problem, but if it is part of the previously published text, it could be considered as plagiarism.
Let me unify the answers given. I ignore the issue of copyright, because the question is about plagiarism.
Author A previews her draft paper on ResearchGate.
Author B independently(1) or dependently(2) uses the new ideas but he does not reference the new ideas.
Situation (1) may arise because he was completely unaware of the new ideas (e.g., he is not even a member of ResearchGate) and independently discovered the new ideas. People are working in parallel on hot topics. Remember too that search engines do not allow Author B or his Referees to search for ideas.
Situation (2) may arise because Author B was able to speed up or refine his ideas from a reading of Author A's draft, or simply claim them as his and pretend that he never read the draft paper on ResearchGate.
I think that RG support might be able to certify the date that Author A published.
{RG please note also the opportunity for you to provide an add-on service to customers which proves that Author B first read Author A's draft on a particular date}
In any case, Author B is apparently guilty of inadvertent(1) or advertent(2) plagiarism. The first recourse for Author A is to write a letter to the editor of the journal, documenting the facts. The editor should at least publish Author A's letter of prior claim. Author B will be given an opportunity to retort.
I have been at a conference, where after a plenary speech presenter was accused, that he, as a reviewer, stopped acceptance of the manuscript, and present these ideas as its own (I do not remember, if data were used).
This case was more or less clear.
Now, RG - is it possible to get time, when someone was reading my paper? Then, well, it is a good statistics.
and, please, read on RG:
The full texts of papers added in RG, are they citable ?
I think the person to have the paper published first must then be the one to be cited. Unfair as it may seem. I have a similar problem. I did not publish my MSc thesis after returning to Africa from The Netherlands (Author A). Because he could not contact me, my supervisor got another student and put him onto do the same project and the second student published (author B) the results of the experiment that I refined and produced data. All they did was acknowledge in the paper that I did the original experiments. Too bad but it happened. Now I would like to write a review paper in the same area and I must now cite author (B) even though i know the ideas were originally mine
It happens
and happened to me too... not just once.
V must be cautious...
But remember....
You can create many more of such concepts upon which you can build n rebuilding...
KNOWLEDGE CANT BE SNATCHED....
Good luck for your original concepts in future...
S Udaya Bhanu
that is the usual pattern happening nowadays. we can use the underlying and main concepts and messages of some other researchers. but, they should be cited. otherwise, it is a kind of plagiarism. unfortunately, plagiarism is not checked for main ideas due to practicality problems. best regards
Plagiarism is plagiarism. If the source was not cited in the published paper this is considered a fraud. You must report this to the Journal that published the work without proper citation and demand a correction or retraction. You might also with to report this issue to retraction watch. You might also wish to file a complaint with COPE if the journal that published the plagiarized work is a member of COPE. We must be diligent in going after plagiarists because the act is a crime.....and if enough scientists are held responsible we might make a dent in preventing future misconduct. The ORI will not take cases involving plagiarism....so that route is useless.
There was a lawsuit filed many years ago....."Berge vs. the University of Alabama". It was a case of a stolen Ph.D. thesis by UAB......that was published without Berge's knowledge then the data was used to obtain a $5M grant from NIH.....but Berge was never mentioned in the grant nor did she grant permission to use her data to file for a grant. She won in Federal court but then UAB appealed and the Fourth Circuit granted their appeal. The argument was basically that once we share data we do not own it. Ludicrous as it opens the door to plagiarism and theft. In other words no one can collaborate on any project without a tight legal agreement in advance. Sharing data at scientific meetings can be a danger if all shared data is up for grabs with no repercussions in place for theft......of words, ideas, data etc. The Fourth Circuit did us harm because they condoned the theft by arguing that once data is shared we no longer own it and have given up rights to future credits....whether it be patents, publications, grants etc. The scientific community must create a conference to address these issues and lobby Congress for regulations to protect.
Without acknowledgement, that's plagiarism; without proper referencing? ..... might be a matter of negligence or honest mistake!
Happened to me. A paper was published that did not cite my original publication on the work and claimed full credit for the discovery. I emailed my original paper to the author and he refused to make a correction. I then emailed my original paper to the Chief Editor of the journal and he finally took action and forced a correction. The correction was published and can be viewed on pubmed. It took quite a bit of energy and diligence but in the end things were made right. If we as scientists continue to allow these frauds to occur and do nothing we perpetrate a trend that no one will take seriously. Passivity is a collaborator in these crimes so we must police ourselves.
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