Thread by @TrevonDLogan

Today for #ScholarSunday I’d like to talk about something that we don’t discuss enough: plagiarism. Specifically, plagiarism among academics.

It is not rare. In fact, it happened to me. Someone submitted a paper to a major journal which plagiarized me.

First, some background. Plagiarism has been researched by Gary Hoover @UofOklahoma. One infamous case, a professor submitted a student’s job market paper under his own name to QJE!!

academic.oup.com/qje/article-ab…

In my own case, a paper was submitted to a journal in my field and I was asked to review it. As I started reading there were turns of phrasing which were very familiar to me. It had all of the words I typically edit OUT of a paper...something wasn’t right.

For example, I have a love affair with the word “indeed”—it’s absolutely perfect. Occasionally in a paper it’s effective, but I’m very heavy handed with them. I always edit them out. This paper had way, way too many. I also LOVE subordinate clauses. This wasn’t an accident...

I went to my most recent version of the paper and the plagiarism was not nearly as prominent as in the version I had been using for seminars! This made perfect sense— the author would have used an earlier version riddled with my most common mistakes and style issues!!

I then went line by line through both papers. It was disturbing. The introduction was mine, and the author made very minor changes. There were several verbatim sentences which were unchanged. There was no doubt that this was full plagiarism, there was no way it was accidental...

What should I do? I was untenured and, now, plagiarized! The first thing I did was call @drlisadcook. I read three or four sections and she couldn’t believe this. This was not an undergrad in distress before an exam, this was a PhD academic cutting and pasting!

After a long discussion she and I agreed that I should write to the editor to inform them of this. We ALSO decided that I should be very clear, include the version which was plagiarized AND point out all of the major offenses. Why? Because being vague could backfire...

This took me a few hours to fully document this. I limited myself to whole sentences and sentences where more than 75% of the words were copied. I then had to cross reference them in both versions as I prepared the letter. (Note: This is a level of detail I have to go through!)

Needless to say, it was the longest letter I’ve ever written to an editor. And like a dutiful assistant professor, I STILL submitted a referee report! (It goes without saying that several parts of the paper were well written, the paper was well motivated, etc etc etc..)

I heard back from the editor immediately! I was informed that the paper was rejected and that they would take this to the editorial board. I do know the paper was never published there, but it certainly could have been published elsewhere and I wouldn’t know.

What I didn’t do was contact the authors’ university, but in hindsight I probably should have done so. I’m not sure if the author ever faced any repercussions of their plagiarism of my work and their submission of plagiarized work to a peer reviewed journal. That’s misconduct.

So I close by saying (1) students are not the only plagiarists our there, (2) this could be a very severe problem, (3) we may not have the right mechanisms to prevent it, but (3) the journal DID find the perfect reviewer for the paper!