How prevalent are plagiarized submissions? Global survey of editors

Scientific papers are retracted for many reasons including fraud (data fabrication or falsification) or error (plagiarism, scientific mistake, ethical problems). Growing attention to fraud in the lay press suggests that the incidence of fraud is increasing. The reasons for retracting 742 English language research papers retracted from the PubMed database between 2000 and 2010 were evaluated. Reasons for retraction were initially dichotomised as fraud or error and then analysed to determine specific reasons for retraction. Error was more common than fraud (73.5% of papers were retracted for error (or an undisclosed reason) vs 26.6% retracted for fraud). Eight reasons for retraction were identified; the most common reason was scientific mistake in 234 papers (31.5%), but 134 papers (18.1%) were retracted for ambiguous reasons. Fabrication (including data plagiarism) was more common than text plagiarism. Total papers retracted per year have increased sharply over the decade (r=0.96; p<0.001), as have retractions specifically for fraud (r=0.89; p<0.001). Journals now reach farther back in time to retract, both for fraud (r=0.87; p<0.001) and for scientific mistakes (r=0.95; p<0.001). Journals often fail to alert the naïve reader; 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way. Levels of misconduct appear to be higher than in the past. This may reflect either a real increase in the incidence of fraud or a greater effort on the part of journals to police the literature. However, research bias is rarely cited as a reason for retraction.

To investigate whether plagiarism is more prevalent in publications retracted from the medical literature when first authors are affiliated with lower-income countries versus higher-income countries. Secondary objectives included investigating other factors associated with plagiarism (e.g., national language of the first author's country affiliation, publication type, journal ranking). Systematic, controlled, retrospective, bibliometric study. Retracted publications dataset in MEDLINE (search filters: English, human, January 1966-February 2008). Retracted misconduct publications were classified according to the first author's country affiliation, country income level, and country national language, publication type, and ranking of the publishing journal. Standardised definitions and data collection tools were used; data were analysed (odds ratio [OR], 95% confidence limits [CL], chi-squared tests) by an independent academic statistician. Of the 213 retracted misconduct publications, 41.8% (89/213) were retracted for plagiarism, 52.1% (111/213) for falsification/fabrication, 2.3% (5/213) for author disputes, 2.3% (5/213) for ethical issues, and 1.4% (3/213) for unknown reasons. The OR (95% CL) of plagiarism retractions (other misconduct retractions as reference) were higher (P  1 retraction) with publications retracted for plagiarism (11.5%, 9/78) than other types of misconduct (28.9%, 24/83). This is the first study to demonstrate that publications retracted for plagiarism are significantly associated with first authors affiliated with lower-income countries. These findings have implications for developing appropriate evidence-based strategies and allocation of resources to help mitigate plagiarism misconduct.

Background It is not clear which research misconduct policies are adopted by biomedical journals. This study assessed the prevalence and content policies of the most influential biomedical journals on misconduct and procedures for handling and responding to allegations of misconduct. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study of misconduct policies of 399 high-impact biomedical journals in 27 biomedical categories of the Journal Citation Reports in December 2011. Journal websites were reviewed for information relevant to misconduct policies. Results Of 399 journals, 140 (35.1%) provided explicit definitions of misconduct. Falsification was explicitly mentioned by 113 (28.3%) journals, fabrication by 104 (26.1%), plagiarism by 224 (56.1%), duplication by 242 (60.7%) and image manipulation by 154 (38.6%). Procedures for responding to misconduct were described in 179 (44.9%) websites, including retraction, (30.8%) and expression of concern (16.3%). Plagiarism-checking services were used by 112 (28.1%) journals. The prevalences of all types of misconduct policies were higher in journals that endorsed any policy from editors’ associations, Office of Research Integrity or professional societies compared to those that did not state adherence to these policy-producing bodies. Elsevier and Wiley-Blackwell had the most journals included (22.6% and 14.8%, respectively), with Wiley journals having greater a prevalence of misconduct definition and policies on falsification, fabrication and expression of concern and Elsevier of plagiarism-checking services. Conclusions Only a third of top-ranking peer-reviewed journals had publicly-available definitions of misconduct and less than a half described procedures for handling allegations of misconduct. As endorsement of international policies from policy-producing bodies was positively associated with implementation of policies and procedures, journals and their publishers should standardize their policies globally in order to increase public trust in the integrity of the published record in biomedicine.