Elsevier Ethics Series Discusses Considerable Academic Misconduct
October 14, 2013
Academic publishing juggernaut Elsevier produces a resource for journal editors called, reasonably enough, Editors’ Update. Retraction Watch calls our attention to the Update’s recent series on ethics in, “Editor: ‘Close to 10% of the Papers We Receive Show Some Sign of Academic Misconduct’.” While the Elsevier ethics series also addresses topics like bias and research misconduct, it is the prevalence of plagiarism that concerns Retraction Watch’s Ivan Oransky. He pulls this quote from a piece in the series by Henrik Rudolph, editor in chief of Applied Surface Science:
“Close to 10% of the papers we receive show some sign of academic misconduct, but since the total number of submissions is increasing, the absolute number is also rising. The most common issue we see is too large an overlap with previously published material, i.e. plagiarism. Cases are evenly divided between self-plagiarism and regular plagiarism. These submissions are most often identified in the editorial phase (by the managing editor or editor) and are rejected before they are sent out for review. iThenticate is an important instrument for detecting academic misconduct, but often common sense is an equally important instrument. . . . If it looks fishy it probably is fishy.”
Examples of fishy-looking content include a sudden shift from U.K. to U.S. English and spelling errors copied straight from the original. Oransky supplies descriptions of the articles to be found in part one of the Elsevier Ethics Special Edition, as well as a brief blurb on what to expect from part two. Check it out for more on this unsettling tendency.
Cynthia Murrell, October 14, 2013
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One Response to “Elsevier Ethics Series Discusses Considerable Academic Misconduct”
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I have 3 issues to ask about.
1. “self-plagiarism” is an oxymoron. One can’t plagiarize one’s own work, unless the writer sold all rights and didn’t get permission to republish. But one can as a writer, rewrite the same material in a different manner for another publication in this case.
2. The software may indeed see something as plagiarism. Does that mean the editors don’t check it out and reject it because the software says so? It’s possible a quote or lengthy discussion is fair use, in an argument for one’s own case.
3. The fact that professors are paying the publisher to publish something seems terribly wrong. It reeks of Payola which was outlawed in the music industry years ago. Maybe why you think people / professors / writers and researchers are using others’ works…because they are paying to get noticed?
4. Citation indexes are another fraud perpetrated on academia. They only show what is most likely the most available material to cite, not necessarily good information…and yes because of this stupid play to get noticed writers are having to stuff their documents with “citation worthy” metadata.
5. A work of good research can be rejected not just by plagiarism from software say-so, it’s often rejected before the editors see it, because the “peer review” process of the “peers” who are not in the same field and reject the work because they wanted to see it as something other than it was. So good research gets bumped and not cited or indexed or published. This latter is as much Academic Misconduct as plagiarism.