A SEVERE CASE OF PLAGIARISM?
A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitted manuscript with the publications provided by the reviewer and concluded that the submission presents a severe case of plagiarism.
The editor contacted the corresponding author by email and requested an explanation within a week. The corresponding author replied within the deadline but the editor did not find the explanation satisfactory. He then contacted the heads of the corresponding author’s institution by email but has not heard from them as yet, even though he has sent them several reminder mails.
In the meantime, the editor has made the decision to reject the submission because of plagiarism. In his letter of rejection, the editor has informed the corresponding author that he has taken action and contacted the heads of the author’s institution.
COPE advice
Finally, a response was received from the institution. The Institution Commission, comprising the Dean and vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and the Dean of Curricula Studiorum, agreed that a substantial part of the article contained evident plagiarism.
At the Institutional hearing, the author declared that during the preparation of the manuscript the contributions of several authors were collated by himself, assembled by himself and that he failed to recognise that part of the manuscript which had been prepared by other participating coauthors were taken from another article published early. These parts of the manuscript had been sent to the author only as a starting point for discussion and were not intended as part of the content of the final paper. There was, however, a misunderstanding.
As a consequence, the Institution Commission proposed the following sanctions:
- All data from each individual experiment and the raw data from the database as well as abstracts and all drafts and final manuscripts prepared for publication by the author MUST be fully reviewed by the Institution Commission for a period of 2 years.
- The author has also been informed that should the Institution Committee note any discrepancy between the raw data and the final manuscript, he will be forbidden from presenting data at all national and international meetings.
- Furthermore, he will also be banned from presenting at the University Scientific Meetings.
The editor was satisfied with the investigation and now considers the case closed.
