This seems to be a case of a bad and a lazy survey paper rather than plagiarism. Plagiarism implies misrepresentation of some kind -- usually passing someone el

This seems to be a case of a bad and a lazy survey paper rather than plagiarism. Plagiarism implies misrepresentation of some kind -- usually passing someone else's work as one's own. With the original works cited this does not seem to be the case here. There are more egregious dirty laundry that perhaps needs more attention than this particular one. While I was a grad student, a labmate's research paper was copied word for word, at least the abstract, introduction and conclusion. If memory serves, this was in around 2002. Funnily enough this plagiarized paper submitted to a conference happened to get assigned to my same labmate for review. The are chairs were informed and the paper rejected, but more interesting was the discussion that ensued within our own lab with other Chinese labmate's. They mentioned that in Chinese universities, at least then, it would be considered perfectly kosher piece of work by a student to replicate word for word a good paper that the student had expended effort in identifying, such an act would not be considered plagiarism, perhaps even a demonstration of good work ethic. There was no clear consensus on whether submitting it in their own name in a prominent ML / datamining conference would have been perceived as an act of plagiarism. My labmate who's paper got plagiarized got lucky that it came to him for review. I can easily imagine scenarios where it needn't have. Also its only because it was submitted to an international conference that it got caught out. I wouldnt be surprised if more of these were going on in more home brew conferences. The original paper was published in ICML. I dont seem to recall with high confidence the exact conference the plagiarized copy was sent to.