Report of a Plagiarized Article

Listserve addendum: Please note that one of the authors listed in the plagiarizing article described below, Shabir Ahmed Dhar, states that he was not aware of his name being listed as an author on the article until after it was accepted. He informed the editor of that fact.--MW

I am the executive editor of Journal of Orthopaedics, available at www.jortho.org.

There is an article in, JK Practitioner, Volume 14 Number 2, Page 110-112 - 110 Lateral Decubitus Position in Spinal Surgery - Current Concepts. Suhail Afzal , Asif Sultan , Mohd Iqbal & Shabir Ahmad Dhar. Link: http://medind.nic.in/jab/t07/i2/jabt07i2p110.pdf

This article was published earlier in Journal of Orthopaedics in 2005 by different authors. Please go to the link:http://www.jortho.org/2005/2/6/e1/index.htm. It is a word by word copy and a clear case of plagiarism. The same author has done plagiarism previously and has been black listed.

I requested the executive editor of JK Practitioner withdraw the article from the journal with immediate effect and take appropriate action against the authors.

Anwar Marthya
________________________
Thank you Dr Anwar for exposing the plagiarism. I think WAME should deserve some ability to decline such attempts.

Ashraful Alam
________________________
It’s really a shame. Retracting the article is a good idea but JK Practitioner is indexed only in Indmed and may not be very visible. I think the author of the first article and both of the editors need to take the issue up with the institution of the authors of the second plagiarized paper. Reporting the issue to MCI which governs the conduct of medical practitioners in India may be a good idea. It may also be reported to COPE, who I am sure will be interested.

Will WAME be interested in creating a repository/listing of duplicate publications or plagiarized articles? This would be a good initiative and such a list can be placed on the WAME site.

Manoj Pandey
Editor-in-Chief, World Journal of Surgical Oncology
________________________
Thanks for thinking of COPE; however, it does not act as a repository of cases, but rather provides an advisory service to editors. Therefore, simply informing COPE would not lead to any action other than that COPE would simply advise any complainant to inform the editor of the second journal that he or she had published a plagiarised article and requesting them to investigate and to publish a retraction in due course if the allegation is proved. The editor of the journal of initial publication should be copied in (as there may be a copyright violation his publisher may wish to take up). Either may wish to inform all authors' employers if no satisfactory explanation is received.

Harvey Marcovitch
Chairman, COPE
________________________
Thanks for your input, but it is complete plagiarism and not duplication. The guy has copied and pasted as a whole and only removed the authors. It is shameful. I have informed the editor in chief of JK Practitioner.