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I have encountered something similar to this for a submission that I reviewed for a scientific journal. I will not list any names or give much detail past thos

I have encountered something similar to this for a submission that I reviewed for a scientific journal. I will not list any names or give much detail past those generalities, but I pointed out that the authors were misusing a particular technical term. In my review I defined the term and explained it briefly. I asked the authors to revise their submission accordingly. The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read. That was its main problem. However, when I received the revised submission, I noticed that the authors plagiarized my definition and explanation almost word for word (from my confidential review). I pointed this out to the editors and they said to just reject the paper with the stated reason being plagiarism, which I did. The journal ended up rejecting the article, but I discovered it a few years later in a different journal. The plagiarized section remained, but the authors swabbed out a lot my phrases for these kind of "tortured phrases". That said, the authors did not fabricate their research (as far as I can tell). They just did not know English well, so it was easier to just copy things that you know are phrased well than to learn to write English well. As the saying goes, do not attribute to malice what can be explained by ignorance or laziness. That does not excuse it but it makes it more understandable. I agree with the article that this is probably just the tip of the iceberg. There are likely many more lesser evils being committed with similar tools that are just much more difficult to spot. I would not have noticed my particular example if I were not a reviewer for the paper, for example. It makes me wonder how big the problem really is.

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
> The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read. That was its main problem. This seems to confirm my suspicion than these cases are not so much about AI-generated content but rather a result of machine translation.
- aliswe 5y ago
  it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english, to get rid of the unique words the author used.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    > it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english It's also a common technique for people who don't speak English to translate it... In fact, quite a bit more common.
    - Clewza313 5y ago
      Sure, but there should never be a need to translate the same phrase back into English.
      - craftinator 5y ago
        The parent post to mine was theorizing that the reason the English was so mangled was because it had been translated from English, then back to English. I was replying that, if the researchers didn't use English as a first language, it's ridiculously more likely that they were translating from their native tongue into English. You're misunderstanding where the notion of translating it twice came from. And sure, there are reasons to translate a phrase from English, to another language, and back to English. This will be familiar to most people who've studied abroad, or done technical conferences on foreign soil, things of that nature. Let's say you're from Bolivia, attending a lecture at an English university, and are planning on referencing some of the content in a paper you're writing, in English. You speak passable English. The lecturer gets into the meat of the topic, and you realize you don't quite understand the context of what they're saying. Some of the conjugations are unfamiliar, so you just write it down as best you can and move on. Later, when writing the paper, you need a way to untangle the phrasing. A simple way is to put it into a translation application, translate to Bolivian, then try to parse it in native tongue. However, you know you have to explain and discuss this section in English; by translating it back, you'll get the English words, but some of the context and grammar structure will be from familiar Bolivian. So yeah, never say never.
        yarky 5y ago
        I love how confident you sound about the Bolivian language. I guess you meant spanish, or maybe aymara/quechua. > This will be familiar to most people who've studied abroad It wasn't to me until now but this explains a lot!
turnersr 5y ago
In your review, did you suggest the definition and explanation that they used? In this situation, would have an acknowledgment at the end have been enough? In my mind, it seems like you all had a conversation and the authors took up your suggestions as the reviewer.
- adaml_623 5y ago
  Not 100% sure but I believe the word confidential implies that the review should only have been read by the editor(s) and not passed on to the authors.
  - pottertheotter 5y ago
    A review is the written feedback authors receive from the journal reviewer. The reviewer can recommend that the authors revise and resubmit, based on the review comments. Usually the review is not published with the final piece, which is what was meant by “confidential review”.
- atrettel 5y ago
  No, I did not suggest the definition and explanation as content for them to use. I was trying to explain a concept that they discussed incorrectly multiple times in the paper. It is an advanced concept that might not even appear in graduate-level courses on the subject, so I can understand why they did not understand it fully. That said, I did not give them permission to copy my words there. If there are any particular changes I want the authors to do I put them in quotes. This wasn't in quotes. It was an explanation for their own benefit so that they can correct the mistakes in the paper (by re-writing it). Once I re-read the submission I wanted to reject it immediately, but I realized that I should get a second opinion first. So I contacted the editors, who agreed that it was blatant plagiarism. Hence, they rejected the paper once I recommended rejection in my second review. So this wasn't just a conversation where I made some suggestions and the authors used them. Even the editors thought it was plagiarism once they looked at it. An acknowledgment would be impossible because the review was single-blind. The reviewers knew the identities of the authors but not the other way around. What the authors should have done was just re-phrase where they used the term in the paper. They didn't even need to copy my explanation, to be frank. The paper would worked fine without the paragraph they copied. If they just re-phrased the relevant parts no other changes would have been needed and this whole thing could have been avoided.
MikeUt 5y ago
> the authors plagiarized my definition and explanation almost word for word (from my confidential review). Is there any way the authors could have kept your definition, and somehow credited you, even anonymously? Because rephrasing definitions is the pinnacle of wasted effort, and leads to confusion - you are asking them to say what you said, but without using your words.
- sunshineforever 5y ago
  Yeah. How can you plagiarize a definition?
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    I was pondering the same thing until I realized the person you are replying to is somewhat stretching the meaning of definition to mean a multiple paragraphs long explanation of a complex concept which was as I understand it lifted verbatim.
    - slapfrog 5y ago
      Even if you only copied a typical one-sentence dictionary definition verbatim without attribution, that would still clearly be a clear-cut case of plagiarism...
      - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
        Hardly. Plagiarism is passing someone else idea or work as your own. Most terms especially technical ones have precise agreed upon definition. Calling quoting them plagiarism is stretching the notion to its limits. Thankfully there is no philosophical conundrum to be had when people are lifting complex explanations.
        slapfrog 5y ago
        If you want to quote a dictionary's definition, you should cite the dictionary you're quoting. If you're passing the dictionary's definition off as your own, word for word, that is plagiarism.
dkarl 5y ago
As a native English speaker, but not an academic researcher, I would have naively done the same. To preface: I am speaking in ignorance of the mechanisms of credit and advancement in your field, so I'm undoubtedly overly harsh. I'm not even trying to be fair, because I admittedly don't have the knowledge to do so. I know academia is a different world from private sector industry, but I would think if the point of a confidential review is for you to do anonymous work to improve someone else's credited work, and their work was improved by incorporating your feedback, you would be happy with the outcome, or else why are you participating in a confidential review process in the first place? There are different mechanisms for publishing words that you want credit for. When someone incorporates my feedback on code or documentation word-for-word, I might in the worst case be suspicious that they are trying to get my approval without engaging with my criticism, but in most cases I'm flattered that they respect my idea enough to put their name on it. Although, in my world, putting your name on something is more about responsibility than credit. The command is called "git blame" and not "git credit", after all. Wanting them to incorporate your feedback, but also wanting them to make some change to the wording to avoid plagiarism, smacks of how freshman essays are graded, not how real work gets done. Like I said, I'm not trying to be fair and don't have the right background to be fair to you. I only speak up because I grew up in an academic family and know that there is a presumption that academic work is more idealistic, more altruistic, and less mercenary than private sector work, and I think it's worth pointing out when the reverse is true.
- kbenson 5y ago
  I almost replied that I had the same view after reading your comment but before opening the article in question. After reading the first but of the article, I think the GP is possibly saying something else, when taken in context, which is that this is exactly the behavior that would be expected from someone that's plagiarizing something else in general using the technique from the article, and all the criticism did was help them get a better plagiarized paper. I can't speak for GP as to whether this was true, or if there are different norms for that sector, or the author was slightly aggressive in asserting their rights, or the assumptions we're making about the content of the criticism are off, but given the article brought a new dimension to it, I thought that worth mentioning.
- 5y ago
maydup-nem 5y ago
So you couldn't ask them to attribute this to you as an anonymous reviewer? And instead wanted them to spend their effort using "their own words" because "inexcusable" and what not? Man, are some people stuck up deep in their own ass. Yeah, a copy-paste isn't nice of them, sure, but are you one fragile snowflake.
- davrosthedalek 5y ago
  They might have wanted to use the phrasing in their own papers. It might now get flagged as plagiarism....
kome 5y ago
But why did you call them for plagiarizing a private note, a confidential review? I mean... In the end they just used your wording to improve their paper, for a concept they already mastered. And you said the paper was good, otherwise. IMHO they acted ethically.
- atrettel 5y ago
  I believe I've answered your questions in two of my previous posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112358 To sum up, the authors did not just use my wording for a short portion. They copied an entire paragraph of my review nearly verbatim. Both the journal and I thought that the authors acted unethically. They violated one of the ethical standards of the journal regarding plagiarism, and these ethical standards were made available to them when they submitted the paper. Those were the rules that I had to evaluate them with for the review, so my hands were tied in some sense. I would also quibble with saying that they mastered the concept, because I really have no way to gauge their understanding if they just copy my own words.
tremon 5y ago
The solution seems simple though: do not publish in a language you do not master. Get a co-author or fellow researcher who does. Isn't that what journals are supposed to be for? To help you reach a wider audience?

hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago

> The paper was not bad but the authors did not know English very well, so it was quite difficult to read. That was its main problem. This seems to confirm my suspicion than these cases are not so much about AI-generated content but rather a result of machine translation.

aliswe 5y ago
it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english, to get rid of the unique words the author used.
- craftinator 5y ago
  > it's a common technique/first layer of plagiarizing a text to translate it from english to eg. spanish and then from spanish to english It's also a common technique for people who don't speak English to translate it... In fact, quite a bit more common.
  - Clewza313 5y ago
    Sure, but there should never be a need to translate the same phrase back into English.
    - craftinator 5y ago
      The parent post to mine was theorizing that the reason the English was so mangled was because it had been translated from English, then back to English. I was replying that, if the researchers didn't use English as a first language, it's ridiculously more likely that they were translating from their native tongue into English. You're misunderstanding where the notion of translating it twice came from. And sure, there are reasons to translate a phrase from English, to another language, and back to English. This will be familiar to most people who've studied abroad, or done technical conferences on foreign soil, things of that nature. Let's say you're from Bolivia, attending a lecture at an English university, and are planning on referencing some of the content in a paper you're writing, in English. You speak passable English. The lecturer gets into the meat of the topic, and you realize you don't quite understand the context of what they're saying. Some of the conjugations are unfamiliar, so you just write it down as best you can and move on. Later, when writing the paper, you need a way to untangle the phrasing. A simple way is to put it into a translation application, translate to Bolivian, then try to parse it in native tongue. However, you know you have to explain and discuss this section in English; by translating it back, you'll get the English words, but some of the context and grammar structure will be from familiar Bolivian. So yeah, never say never.
      - yarky 5y ago
        I love how confident you sound about the Bolivian language. I guess you meant spanish, or maybe aymara/quechua. > This will be familiar to most people who've studied abroad It wasn't to me until now but this explains a lot!

turnersr 5y ago

In your review, did you suggest the definition and explanation that they used? In this situation, would have an acknowledgment at the end have been enough? In my mind, it seems like you all had a conversation and the authors took up your suggestions as the reviewer.

adaml_623 5y ago
Not 100% sure but I believe the word confidential implies that the review should only have been read by the editor(s) and not passed on to the authors.
- pottertheotter 5y ago
  A review is the written feedback authors receive from the journal reviewer. The reviewer can recommend that the authors revise and resubmit, based on the review comments. Usually the review is not published with the final piece, which is what was meant by “confidential review”.
atrettel 5y ago
No, I did not suggest the definition and explanation as content for them to use. I was trying to explain a concept that they discussed incorrectly multiple times in the paper. It is an advanced concept that might not even appear in graduate-level courses on the subject, so I can understand why they did not understand it fully. That said, I did not give them permission to copy my words there. If there are any particular changes I want the authors to do I put them in quotes. This wasn't in quotes. It was an explanation for their own benefit so that they can correct the mistakes in the paper (by re-writing it). Once I re-read the submission I wanted to reject it immediately, but I realized that I should get a second opinion first. So I contacted the editors, who agreed that it was blatant plagiarism. Hence, they rejected the paper once I recommended rejection in my second review. So this wasn't just a conversation where I made some suggestions and the authors used them. Even the editors thought it was plagiarism once they looked at it. An acknowledgment would be impossible because the review was single-blind. The reviewers knew the identities of the authors but not the other way around. What the authors should have done was just re-phrase where they used the term in the paper. They didn't even need to copy my explanation, to be frank. The paper would worked fine without the paragraph they copied. If they just re-phrased the relevant parts no other changes would have been needed and this whole thing could have been avoided.

MikeUt 5y ago

> the authors plagiarized my definition and explanation almost word for word (from my confidential review). Is there any way the authors could have kept your definition, and somehow credited you, even anonymously? Because rephrasing definitions is the pinnacle of wasted effort, and leads to confusion - you are asking them to say what you said, but without using your words.

sunshineforever 5y ago
Yeah. How can you plagiarize a definition?
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  I was pondering the same thing until I realized the person you are replying to is somewhat stretching the meaning of definition to mean a multiple paragraphs long explanation of a complex concept which was as I understand it lifted verbatim.
  - slapfrog 5y ago
    Even if you only copied a typical one-sentence dictionary definition verbatim without attribution, that would still clearly be a clear-cut case of plagiarism...
    - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
      Hardly. Plagiarism is passing someone else idea or work as your own. Most terms especially technical ones have precise agreed upon definition. Calling quoting them plagiarism is stretching the notion to its limits. Thankfully there is no philosophical conundrum to be had when people are lifting complex explanations.
      - slapfrog 5y ago
        If you want to quote a dictionary's definition, you should cite the dictionary you're quoting. If you're passing the dictionary's definition off as your own, word for word, that is plagiarism.

dkarl 5y ago

As a native English speaker, but not an academic researcher, I would have naively done the same. To preface: I am speaking in ignorance of the mechanisms of credit and advancement in your field, so I'm undoubtedly overly harsh. I'm not even trying to be fair, because I admittedly don't have the knowledge to do so. I know academia is a different world from private sector industry, but I would think if the point of a confidential review is for you to do anonymous work to improve someone else's credited work, and their work was improved by incorporating your feedback, you would be happy with the outcome, or else why are you participating in a confidential review process in the first place? There are different mechanisms for publishing words that you want credit for. When someone incorporates my feedback on code or documentation word-for-word, I might in the worst case be suspicious that they are trying to get my approval without engaging with my criticism, but in most cases I'm flattered that they respect my idea enough to put their name on it. Although, in my world, putting your name on something is more about responsibility than credit. The command is called "git blame" and not "git credit", after all. Wanting them to incorporate your feedback, but also wanting them to make some change to the wording to avoid plagiarism, smacks of how freshman essays are graded, not how real work gets done. Like I said, I'm not trying to be fair and don't have the right background to be fair to you. I only speak up because I grew up in an academic family and know that there is a presumption that academic work is more idealistic, more altruistic, and less mercenary than private sector work, and I think it's worth pointing out when the reverse is true.

kbenson 5y ago
I almost replied that I had the same view after reading your comment but before opening the article in question. After reading the first but of the article, I think the GP is possibly saying something else, when taken in context, which is that this is exactly the behavior that would be expected from someone that's plagiarizing something else in general using the technique from the article, and all the criticism did was help them get a better plagiarized paper. I can't speak for GP as to whether this was true, or if there are different norms for that sector, or the author was slightly aggressive in asserting their rights, or the assumptions we're making about the content of the criticism are off, but given the article brought a new dimension to it, I thought that worth mentioning.
5y ago

maydup-nem 5y ago

So you couldn't ask them to attribute this to you as an anonymous reviewer? And instead wanted them to spend their effort using "their own words" because "inexcusable" and what not? Man, are some people stuck up deep in their own ass. Yeah, a copy-paste isn't nice of them, sure, but are you one fragile snowflake.

davrosthedalek 5y ago
They might have wanted to use the phrasing in their own papers. It might now get flagged as plagiarism....

kome 5y ago

But why did you call them for plagiarizing a private note, a confidential review? I mean... In the end they just used your wording to improve their paper, for a concept they already mastered. And you said the paper was good, otherwise. IMHO they acted ethically.

atrettel 5y ago
I believe I've answered your questions in two of my previous posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28112358 To sum up, the authors did not just use my wording for a short portion. They copied an entire paragraph of my review nearly verbatim. Both the journal and I thought that the authors acted unethically. They violated one of the ethical standards of the journal regarding plagiarism, and these ethical standards were made available to them when they submitted the paper. Those were the rules that I had to evaluate them with for the review, so my hands were tied in some sense. I would also quibble with saying that they mastered the concept, because I really have no way to gauge their understanding if they just copy my own words.

tremon 5y ago

The solution seems simple though: do not publish in a language you do not master. Get a co-author or fellow researcher who does. Isn't that what journals are supposed to be for? To help you reach a wider audience?