Dealing With the Possibility of Self-Plagiarism

We received an article from a professor who acknowledged under conflict of interest that he had written for a number of journals on the same topic as he had for us, and that he doubted this was a conflict of interest. On further e-mail questioning, he took offence and stated that parts of the article he had submitted had been published in those numerous journals, from as long ago as 1995 to much more recently. He refused answer whether he had directly copied from his previous work and was quite aggressive about the whole issue.

My concern is that he may have colleagues who have helped write up the various publications and that they could complain if he has directly copied previously published work. What do you think? Am I over-reacting or not? It is an important article and this professor has researched the topic and published on it for several years.

Vivienne Miller
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An aggressive refusal to answer your editorial question suggests that some of the material is copied from elsewhere. This is a problem if the professor does not hold the copyright or if it was produced in co-operation with co-authors. I assume that the professor will have included the previous papers in his list of references. You could therefore check these references to see if large sections have been copied. If there is a big overlap you could be dealing with duplicate publication.

John S Dowden
Editor, Australian Prescriber
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I agree with John: methinks he protesteth too much. Authors should realize that an editor’s duties include keeping the literature clean of drug advertising masquerading as scientific articles and for duplicate publication. Anyone who reacts with anger to an editor’s request for information about conflicts of interest or prior publication is probably guilty. I have very little tolerance for this type of attitude. When it has happened to us, we just rejected the article and moved on.

Bill Tierney
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You can ask for a declaration from the author stating that the present manuscript does not carry excerpts/material from his earlier published work; and that he believes that there is no issue of duplicate publication or plagiarism; and that if any such allegation is later found to be true, the journal can take appropriate action, including retraction of the paper. You can add a line that these precautions are essential because of the stringent publication norms these days.

You can even provide the links of ICMJE/CSE material on duplicate publication, plagiarism, and retraction.

If the undertaking is given, you have to believe the author in good faith (however, that does not hold you from conducting an independent review/inquiry).

If the author refuses to give this undertaking, you can wriggle out of it saying "sorry, not possible."

Piyush Gupta
Associate Editor, Indian Pediatrics
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I don't see this case as a conflict of interest, but as a case of possible self-plagiarism, a topic that has received considerable attention on WAME within the last few months.

Again, I think that questions about how much text has been recycled, how it was recycled (eg, are quotations or citations provided or are portions of text simply copied from earlier articles and pasted on the new manuscript without any reference to the earlier work?) and from where (eg, methodology section vs. literature review) need to be clarified.

There is a relevant article at http://www.plagiary.org/2007/song-from-myself.pdf that might interest you.

Again, in my opinion, this is an issue that is in urgent need of clear guidance.

Miguel Roig
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Thank you very much to those who took time to reply. Unfortunately, my instinct was very correct, and it took me 10 min on the Net to uncover an article that the author published in a major Australian newspaper from 10 days before...It was identical except that he had swapped around the paragraphs. He also gave no credit nor reference to his 15 co-authors on an international project, so I have informed the Board that I will not allow the article to be published. I do take your point, however, but I think (and always thought) there was something really off about the writing style.

Beware a woman's intuition!!!

Vivienne Miller
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Congratulations for preventing such misconduct. But please remember that sexist language can be another misconduct in academic medical writing. Of course you meant "beware the Editors' intuitions" in the last sentence.

Behrooz Astaneh
Deputy Editor, Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences