I have wanted to write about this story for some time now, but have been debating how to proceed as it concerns a rather sensitive subject. I decided that the best course of action was to use ridiculous examples in place of real identifiers so that the parties involved would stay completely anonymous. As the old saying goes, the names are made up but the story is real...
Recently I received a manuscript to review for the
Journal of Ice Cream. The paper examined the influence of flavor name and percent chocolate content on tasters’
Peace Pop flavor preferences. I only glanced briefly at the manuscript as I set it in my “to do” pile, but not before noticing that its title was nearly identical to that of another article on Peace Pop flavor preferences published a few years ago in
Ben & Jerry’s Quarterly. The
BJQ article – which, as fate would have it, I had read not more than two weeks before – was written by several co-authors, the most senior of whom is an extremely well known and highly respected scoopologist. The similarity of the titles made me wonder if both articles were written by the same authors, but I decided that it also could have been a coincidence. (I don’t know about the rest of you, but I sometimes struggle to create titles for my manuscripts that are not repetitive of existing article titles.) Anyway, I didn’t think much more about it until I sat down to read the manuscript a short time later.
The first thing I did was flip to the data and methods section to look at the dataset that was used. I recognized it from the
BJQ article, so I knew that the same authors had written the
JIC manuscript I was reviewing. (I’d like to note here that I do not make a habit of trying to snoop out the authors of the manuscripts I review. However, considering that the field of scoopology is relatively small compared to other disciplines like foodology and drinkonomics, it is often possible to identify the author(s) of a “blind” manuscript, particularly if the same dataset is used in multiple articles.) Not thinking much of the discovery, I flipped back to the first page and began to read.
After reading the first two paragraphs I thought to myself, “Hmm. That sounds a lot like the introduction of the
BJQ article.” But, as with titles, I sometimes find it difficult to craft introductions to my manuscripts that are not derivative of things I’ve already written, so I wasn’t terribly concerned that the authors had borrowed from their earlier work. Then I kept reading. “This really, really sounds a lot like the
BJQ article,” I thought. I decided that I was going to comment in my review that the authors had borrowed too heavily from their previous article, and I wanted to identify which text in the
JIC manuscript had been taken directly from the
BJQ article. So, I located my copy of the
BJQ article, put it side by side with the
JIC manuscript, and began highlighting the copied passages. Would you believe that I did not stop highlighting
once in nine pages? Not once! In
nine pages!! Every subject heading, every sentence – the entire front end from the introduction right up to the data and methods section was taken verbatim from the
BJQ article. The only difference was that an additional paragraph of text had been inserted to justify the inclusion of percent chocolate content, a variable the
BJQ article had not examined.
I was in total disbelief. The more I read, the more I highlighted. The analysis was identical to that of the published article, save for the addition of percent chocolate content, so the results section was nearly identical as well. Same goes for the discussion and conclusion – the entire last two pages of text were lifted directly from the
BJQ article! By the time I finished reading the manuscript I was speechless. I would estimate that, conservatively, 85% of the
JIC manuscript was indistinguishable from the authors’ published
BJQ article.
After the shock wore off, I decided that I needed to contact the
JIC editor directly. Then I remembered that ShockProf had had a similar experience when she reviewed a manuscript for
Scoops some years back, so I called her to ask her what she had done. She told me that she had also contacted the editor directly, and agreed with my decision. So, I e-mailed the editor and explained that I had some serious concerns about the manuscript I’d been asked to review, and asked if we could speak by phone. I also attached an electronic copy of the
BJQ article, explaining that it would be of interest when we spoke, which ended up being the very next day.
Crazy, huh? I have a couple of thoughts about the matter, then I’d be interested to hear others' thoughts. First, I surmised from reading both papers that the data belonged to the senior author, but that the bulk of the analysis and writing was completed by the other co-authors. Given the exceptionally high regard in which the senior author is held by fellow scoopologists, I imagine that the creation and submission of the second manuscript to
JIC was done without this person's knowledge or consent. There is simply no way a scholar of this person's caliber would ever stand for such shoddy, irresponsible, and unprofessional work. Suffice it to say that I would not want to be in the co-authors' position when the journal editor contacts them. I just do not understand how someone could jeopardize a colleague's reputation like that.
Second, I pondered the scenario in which I (or the other reviewers) did not catch this, and the manuscript was published in
JIC. I imagine it would be a copyright violation of the
BJQ article – anyone know what would have happened, either to the
Journal of Ice Cream or to the authors? I suppose it’s probably a good thing that this was discovered before the manuscript ever had a chance to be published, both for the authors and for the journal.
Finally, I am just stunned at the laziness, carelessness, and foolishness involved here. The Trailing Spouse suggested that perhaps the co-author(s) didn't know that such behavior was improper; I assured him that you can’t leave a Ph.D. program without knowing that ripping off published work – even if it’s your own – is unethical, dishonest, and just plain wrong.
So, what do you think? What would you have done in my situation? Has this ever happened to you as a reviewer? Have you ever come across published articles by the same author(s) that you thought were a bit too close for comfort? And, most importantly, would you also ditch criminology for a career in scoopology quicker than you can say "Cherry Garcia"?
I read last week's post about student writing with great interest (although obviously without enough energy to actually comment).
