One of my colleague's largest publication seems to be plagiarized/purely reproductive-What to do?

Question

This year, a post-doc joined our research group, his main publication is a Nature Communications paper with 21 authors in total (solid state physics). As his and my work have quite some overlap, I began to notice that out of the 15 subfigures in the paper, 12 are straight up reproductions of work published between 6-70 years before they published their paper. The information they convey, even the layout and design of the subfigures can all be found in other publications.

There are only two subfigures which I haven't yet found in the wider literature. These two subfigures are heavily derivative of the other figures in the paper. As is usual in our field, there is not much said in the text that isn't somehow in the figures, so the text itself is also like this.

For 11 out of 15 subfigures, they do at least cite some sources, but these subfigures and the information therein are so commonplace in the field, that no claim to novelty can be based on these figures.

The other four subfigures are a bit more complicated. As I mentioned two are derivative, the other two have been published years before his paper, but he conveniently omits citing their work. Even though the mechanism and main conclusion he brings in his paper were already mentioned in these two works. I do believe he actually performed these measurements.

I wonder what am I to do with this?

• Do I tell this to my boss?

• Do I inform my institute?

• Should something like this be retracted?

• Do I confront him?

Personally, I am shocked, that 21 people, including some big names can get together and publish something like this. I am also deeply worried of picking fights and I am not sure my superiors would like to hear about my finding. (None of my direct superiors are part of the 21 co-authors).

Answer 1

I would not assume your colleague had anything to do with the figures.

Be very very careful; you can read about the extremely sad story of Ranga Dias who claimed to have discovered room-temperature superconductivity; Dias was not first author of a now retracted infamous paper, and also of this other retracted but apparently had a hand in producing the figures. Please, read the story to understand how students can be unwitting participants in deceptions.

If you have solid grounds to suspect plagiarism or image manipulation, you should contact the journal. They have the resources to conduct a full investigation, and they would be the last arbiters of the case anyways.

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Edit: thanks to the link provided by @anyon, you can read Dias investigation committee report on this mess. To highlight and reinforce my suggested caution,

here's an excerpt from page 16:

• Prior to publication, [Dr. Dias] provided R(T) data to co-authors only in the form of finished figures and not in the form of raw measurement data.

Here's another excerpt from page 19:

• In his discussion with the Investigation Committee, [Dr. Dias] assumed responsibility for assembling the data and preparing the figures and manuscript for the Nature 2020 (CSH) Paper.

Please, do not reach hasty conclusions on the origin of figures (or more generally data or text) before you know with certainly who created the figures. Much better to let the journal handle this: they have the authority to ask for raw data and give the authors a chance to explain any suspicious figures.

Answer 2

I would advise you against making any outright accusations, or using any words that can be perceived as accusatory in nature and involving subjective judgments, such as “plagiarism” and “purely reproductive”, in connection with your colleague’s paper.

What you can reasonably do is share factual information regarding your findings with your superiors. Unless you are very high up the totem pole, you should not leap to conclusions that involve subjective value judgments about whether someone committed plagiarism or other type of misconduct. If you’re going to report anything, report pure, objectively verifiable facts (“subfigure 2.3 is similar to a subfigure from previously published reference […], which is not cited in the paper”) and let others draw their own conclusions and decide what if any action is appropriate to take.

I can’t advise you on whether it’s a good idea to make such a report. That depends on many things. But, as long as you stick to facts, it does not sound like it would be unreasonable to share your observations with the PI.

Some other things to consider:

1. There is much more to a paper than figures. What about the actual analysis and other scientific content? Even if all the figures are reused, it’s not clear that this would be plagiarism.

2. The paper has 21 authors! Is your colleague the first author? If yes, it may make sense to consider him as largely responsible for the figure reuse, but even so, he shares a good part of the responsibility with other authors. If he is not the first author, his culpability even in the case of misconduct would appear quite limited, and in that case, the fact that his “main publication” is as a minor coauthor on a paper with 21 authors should probably be of greater concern to you than the alleged misconduct.

3. Consider the possibility that, more than being an unethical paper, this paper is simply a bad or mediocre one with a low level of novelty. It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has been published in a good journal, even by large groups of authors from well-known universities.

Answer 3

Reach out to your PI or other big name of your institute. Ask her/him, that you do not see the novelty of the paper if s/he can help you understand this. You must make it sound as honest curiosity, why this deserves to be published in such a high-ranked journal. Don't make accusations.

In the best case, you learn something, you did not get from reading the paper yourself. If your feeling is right, your peer starts wondering how this was ever published. Do not push further, let it go and try to write papers with more scientific value.

Answer 4

PubPeer.com is intended to be an effective tool for handling situations like this. Post there, anonymously, if the journal's editors are not responsive.

Answer 5

I would be very cautious about making official charges in any venue. Not everyone will make the same judgement about such things. There are a lot of considerations, including whether there are creative elements in the images or not. This affects both plagiarism and copyright. There is also the question about what license(s) might apply to the figures, since the publication itself is open access.

But, I think it would be appropriate to have a quiet word with them, face to face, raising the issues. "These seem to be copies...." Maybe they can give you a good explanation of why it was appropriate, if, indeed, it is.

But "confront" may imply the wrong attitude going in. Among other things, it would probably negate the possibility of any cooperative relationship in the future.

Maybe a retraction or correction is needed, but get full information first, including that provided by the author(s).