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I once reviewed a journal article that at least a few pages of plagiarized text in it. I noticed only because I thought some sentences sounded like I wrote them
by btrettel 8y ago
I once reviewed a journal article that at least a few pages of plagiarized text in it. I noticed only because I thought some sentences sounded like I wrote them, and as it turned out, I did write them. Not surprisingly, I found the paper even worse from a technical standpoint, so I gave it a rather negative review. I tried to be as helpful as possible, even suggesting what they should do instead of what they did. It appears the paper was rejected.
Fast forward 6 to 12 months. I found what seems to be a descendant of the paper published in another journal. While the vast majority of the plagiarism I identified was removed, they added some parts plagiarized from my review. I contacted the journal, who replied that plagiarism detection software didn't find anything. I replied that it wouldn't because a confidential review would not be in their system. Plus, I gave them a list of plagiarized parts; all they had to do was check against the paper. I told them that I did not spend much time checking for plagiarism, so for all I know there's a lot more plagiarism in the paper. The journal representative never did anything about the paper, unfortunately. I now refuse to publish in that journal and discourage others from publishing there as well.
- gruez 8y ago>The journal representative never did anything about the paper, unfortunately. I wonder if you could submit DMCA requests for this.
- scott_s 8y agoI'm surprised that you didn't reject it for plagiarism. That's what I did when I discovered plagiarism while reviewing a paper. I wasn't an expert in some of the background material, and they referenced a survey paper on that topic, so I went and read that survey paper. To my surprise, the author had lifted entire paragraphs from the survey paper. I rejected it for that. I was actually a sub-reviewer, so I notified the PC member who had asked me to review the paper, and they agreed that yielded an automatic rejection.