I just received an e-mail from a professor at a foreign university alerting me to the fact that he’s discovered a case where other scientists have plagiarised my work. He writes (translated by me into English):
Any suggestions for the best way of dealing with this? Should I write to[ol]
[li]the authors of the plagiarised paper?[/li][li]the publisher of the plagiarised paper?[/li][li]the universities where authors of the plagiarised paper work?[/li][li]the publisher of my article?[/li][li]all of the above?[/li][li]someone else?[/li][/ol]Should I demand anything besides an acknoweldgment of my work?
At best this is poor academic practice, and at worst it is fraud.
You should get, at the least, an acknowledgement of your work. More seriously (in a way), the plagiarists have passed your work off as their own and are perhaps reaping the benefits.
Personally I would write to the authors, copied to the universities at which they are placed.
Using the whatever-works-best-but-requires-the-least-effort principle I would go for 1 and 2.
Write to the authors and simply enclose a copy of your letter to their publishers asking for a formal apology for publishing your material without permission. In the letter to the publishers enclose copies of the plagiarised content.
I would talk to your depatment chair and Dean of your college (or equivilant) and see if there is a procedure to be followed. This may be the sort of thing where they will be the most effective advocates for you. If nothing else, the Univeristy’s lawyers can write much more threatening letters than you can.
When commenting papers published in a scientific journal, it is common practice to write a letter to the journal to elucidate the problem. The journal will most probably publish a statement and take nescessary measures towards the paper in question, e.g. withdraw it from publication.
I’m no longer employed at a university, but I’ll contact the Department Head of the university where I wrote the paper and ask if there’s an office that deals with such issues.
The plagiarised paper isn’t a journal paper. It appears to be some sort of technical report published by a university department’s research lab in support of a request for, or in fulfillment of the requirements of, a research grant. If I can find out what the granting institution is, then they might cancel the grant for the plagiarists, but they’re certainly not going to give the money to me instead.
One other thing I would recommend that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is to bring the matter to the attention of the original publisher. They hold the copyright on the original publication and should be notified of any violations.
Seems to me like a minor violation no one should be losing their job or probably even funding over. The did cite you, they just failed to cite you every time they should have. I’d just contact the people and tell them to change it. Then, if they don’t, the problem is a little more severe…
Who funded your original work? As your location is in the UK (I like the map reference ) I guess it could have been one of the Research Councils. If it was, it might be worth checking their website. I know EPSRC (the Engineering And Physical Sciences Research Council) has guidance on how to handle allegations of scientific misconduct available at http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ResearchFunding/GrantHolders/GuideToGoodPracticeInScienceAndEngineeringResearch.htm .
Otherwise I think your idea of speaking to the University where you were when you published makes sense.
I’m confused - where do you get that he was cited? It seems to me that they have gathered information from public sources and put them together for a research grant. Certainly seems fraudulant to me.
Also, we tell all our students, undergrad onwards, of the seriousness of plagiarism. It therefore doesn’t set a great example when those who preach such do not follow their own guidance. This is why the university themselves would be concerned.
Apparently the OP is referenced a few times. The plagerized paper fails to attribute long sections that are quoted verbatim from the OP’s origional work. Depending on the length of these quotes, it might be fair use if they were attributed. (Sounds like it’s worse than that ). Failing such attribution, though, it clearly IS plagerism.
The problem, if the OP is explaining the situation correctly, is that they did not, in fact, correctly cite him. This is not a trivial distinction; the original work is the OP’s intellectual property and he deserves acknowledgement. This is particularly important in a technical article or grant proposal/report where the “fair use” standard doesn’t really apply. (Technical articles and reports should be essentially all original materal with explicit citations to references, rather than quoting or rewording reference papers except in passing.)
Making an end reference, but using specific statements or whole passages without explicit citation (either parenthetically or in endnotes) is a gross violation of both standard style formats and professional ethics. It’s hard to say whether this is blithe indifference or ignorance to correct citation form, or deliberate plagerism, but at the very least the OP deserves an acknowledgement of his original work as distinct from the derivative work done by by the authors. I’d contact the authors first and CC your department head. If it’s a legimate oversight, they can formally acknowledge you with a return letter and offer capitulation, and nobody gets their panties in a twist. If they don’t, then you have a responsibility to advance it to your university’s legal department. If they’ve done this to you deliberately, then they’re probably doing it chronically to other researchers, and possibly defrauding their grant provider on how much original work they’re actually producing.
In short, try a polite letter, then hand it over to the IP sharks.
I would take this very seriously, if you consider that protecting your intellectual property has any value. If confirmed as you describe, then this is completely unethical, no question, and sounds contrary to copyright and fair use rules, but I am by no means well-informed on those topics. Stranger On A Train summed it up very nicely, but I thought I’d add:
Have you verified this yourself, according to Quartz’s suggestion? (Who is the guy reporting the plagiarism, anyway?)
Have you contacted your co-authors (if any) or your advisor/supervisor for the work in question?
The next step might be to write the authors and copy both your/their legal folks. Your first letter would not even need to be at all threatening, just the visibility of who you’ve copied should establish the seriousness of the matter to the other author(s). If your guys are given a heads-up first, then they’ll know in what regards the letter was sent.
I did this before posting here. As I believe I mentioned in my OP, the plagiarised paper is publically available on the Internet. I downloaded a copy and sure enough pages 16 through 18 are lifted from my paper word-for-word or with trivial substitutions.
Don’t call the authors. That’ll just alert them that you’re wise to them and give them time to prepare bullshit excuses. Call a lawyer and let them handle it; my guess is your lawyer will contact the publisher. Yeah, I know it costs money, but it may take only a letter on a legal letterhead to get someone’s attention (if you mail them a letter they won’t take you anywheres near as seriously). They may just offer you an apology, which you probably should settle for… in addition to the attribution and the legal fees.
) I guess it could have been one of the Research Councils. If it was, it might be worth checking their website. I know EPSRC (the Engineering And Physical Sciences Research Council) has guidance on how to handle allegations of scientific misconduct available at