Timeline for One of my colleague's largest publication seems to be plagiarized/purely reproductive-What to do?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
25 events
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| Nov 16 at 18:07 | comment | added | Swiss Frank | DO NOT contact anyone but the journal, from a burner account, and I fear your description here is already too frank unless you've subtly misdirected a bit (e.g., number of authors) and the question should perhaps be deleted. The risk/reward calculation is against you. You have to watch out for your career and research is too small a world to make even one enemy. There is no possible reward. There is however risk big or small, which cannot be quantified or known, so it is a bad decision. Scale the heights of the ivory tower and do more honest work yourself: that must be your revenge. | |
| Nov 15 at 21:13 | history | edited | Buffy | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Nov 15 at 18:34 | answer | added | usr1234567 | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 15 at 14:58 | comment | added | Dilworth | @terdon, yes I come from math; I never realized a figure (which is normally merely a nice pedagogic illustration in math) would be a part of the "result". | |
| Nov 15 at 14:42 | comment | added | Moishe Kohan | @terdon: Yes, pure math, where figures are simply meant to illustrate a proof or a definition. In contrast, results in pure math are theorems. | |
| Nov 15 at 11:00 | comment | added | terdon | @Dilworth is there any field where figures aren't part of the results? Figures include graphs, plotted data, images of experimental results etc. In my experience, they are usually there to convey results. The only exception I can think of off the top of my head would be a figure used only to explain the experimental setup, but usually I would expect figures to be showing the data, the results. | |
| Nov 15 at 9:12 | answer | added | WHO'sNoToOldRx4Covid-CENSORED | timeline score: 3 | |
| Nov 15 at 1:39 | comment | added | Dilworth | Where is the big "plagiarism"? All you've stated is copied figures. Are they essential to the paper? I'm confused. Is it the case in solid state physics, that figures are part of the "results"? | |
| Nov 15 at 1:13 | comment | added | Makkabi | To the 21 authors, of course I dont actually know what all these 21 ppl did, even the attribution at the end of the article has some 7 ppl just participating "in discussions of the paper". After publication, he does clearly make it seem, like this was mostly his work, he goes around and gives talks leaving the impression that the other 20 ppl were just supervising/funding/along for the ride. I think it is save to assume, by the standards of my field, that he was at least a major contributor to each subfigure. | |
| Nov 15 at 1:10 | comment | added | Makkabi | I am not the watch dog of the group, it just happens to be he case that we both work on similar thing and ever so often I realize that what ever he wrote I can find in anohter paper from before. I am just getting familiar with the field and know this particular paper quite well. I coincidentally realized this because I know the wider literature and his paper, but i felt this was so glaring that I couldnt avoid noticing. | |
| Nov 14 at 22:56 | answer | added | ZeroTheHero | timeline score: 15 | |
| Nov 14 at 21:45 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Nov 14 at 16:38 | answer | added | Dan Romik | timeline score: 4 | |
| Nov 14 at 15:29 | answer | added | Buffy | timeline score: 1 | |
| Nov 14 at 15:20 | comment | added | Azor Ahai -him- | @user176372 Really? In my field I would assume the first author was responsible for all the figures. | |
| Nov 14 at 14:21 | history | edited | Azor Ahai -him- | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
added 25 characters in body
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| Nov 14 at 14:18 | comment | added | MisterMiyagi | Why do you consistently say "he did…" etc. when there are "21 authors in total" involved? | |
| Nov 14 at 14:16 | comment | added | user176372 | As a remark: You keep on referring to your colleague as if he is the only author of a paper with, by your accounting, 21. Orthogonal to your question, I don't think that's a particularly useful perspective, as I doubt any 1 author constructed the majority of the figures. | |
| Nov 14 at 14:14 | comment | added | Anyon | Are the reviewer comments available? Nature Communications sometimes post them, and they could be useful to read to figure out which parts the reviewers believed to be novel. | |
| Nov 14 at 14:09 | comment | added | A rural reader | Sounds like you’re the watchdog of the group. Have you discussed the matter in any fashion with this new colleague yet? | |
| Nov 14 at 14:08 | comment | added | Bryan Krause♦ | Is the prior similar work cited in the paper? It can be perfectly normal that most of a paper is reestablishing results already found to effectively show that you're working with the same material. It might be better to focus on the supposed novel figures that you claim are plagiarized. | |
| Nov 14 at 13:55 | comment | added | Stephan Kolassa | (1) What is your position in the group? (2) You write that "these subfigures and the information therein are so common place in the field". That makes me wonder how the paper got published. After all, it needed to demonstrate novelty to the reviewers and editor. Plagiarism is usually a question of re-using material that is uncommon. | |
| Nov 14 at 13:49 | comment | added | Makkabi | The structure of his paper is basically this 11 pictures are pure and utter reproduction that he needs to establish that he indeed has the material he wants to have (he does this in a very redundant and verbose way). The methods of verification are very well known. Then we have the grand finale of two subfigures, which are plagiarized, then from one of the two plagiarzed pictures he derives two additional subfigures. However if you take the plagiarized pictures away basically nothing of substanceis left in my opinion in the picture. | |
| Nov 14 at 13:46 | comment | converted from answer | Eds | More plagiarism than derivation would you say? | |
| Nov 14 at 13:42 | history | asked | Makkabi | CC BY-SA 4.0 |