News
My article has been plagiarised
The Copyright Information Point (CIP) receives many interesting questions that could easily be on an exam about Dutch Copyright Law. In the current and upcoming WUR Library Newsletters, we will highlight some of these because they're too interesting to keep to ourselves. Today's question is about plagiarism.
The question
I strongly suspect that my article has been plagiarised. What can I do about it?
The CIP's answer
Contact the CIP immediately if your paper is republished by a predatory journal or if (part of) your work is plagiarised.
Sometimes researchers come across a scientific paper, often published in a predatory or low-quality journal, containing passages that seem familiar to them. Upon closer investigation, it turns out that the passages are their own text and have been taken verbatim from an article they published themselves. The authors who copied the text have either forgotten or neglected to put the words in quotation marks and, on top of that, they didn’t bother to cite the original. It is an example of blatant plagiarism, which is considered a serious academic offence these days.
Plagiarism and plagiarism accusations are not a typical modern phenomenon, and can be traced through the ages, starting in Graeco-Roman antiquity. The term plagiarism and the metaphor “showing off someone else’s feathers” have their origin in this ancient period (Algra, 2021). The term plagiarism is derived from the Latin word “plagiarus”, which literally means “kidnapper”. The word was first used by the Roman poet Martialis, who was indignant that another poet had “kidnapped” his poems. In those days, there were already plagiarism hunters, but at the same time, (creative) imitation (“imitatio”) of great writers and poets was considered a virtue (Algra, 2021). Thinking about plagiarism has changed over time. The emerging individualism of early modern times, the development of the printing press, or the introduction of copyright law may have possibly made plagiarism issues more urgent (Algra, 2021).
Today, most reputable publishers use plagiarism-detection software to verify the originality of submitted manuscripts. However, papers published by predatory or low-quality journals usually escape from plagiarism detection. At the CIP, we receive questions from authors who recognise paragraphs and figures in articles, often published in these kinds of journals or from authors whose complete articles are unlawfully copied (also see: A predatory journal has published my article).
Please contact the CIP immediately if your paper is republished by a predatory journal, but please also contact us if a part of your work is plagiarised. The CIP will generate a similarity report with Turnitin to determine the degree of the plagiarism. Based on the outcome of this check, we can advise you about the subsequent steps (e.g. lodging a formal complaint or demanding the rejection of a plagiarised paper) and will direct you to the appropriate department/person at WUR.
If you have any questions about copyright law, please feel free to send them to copyright@wur.nl. Don't worry! We will only write about your question with your permission.
Reference
Algra, K. (2021). Historische perspectieven op plagiaat, ontlenen en citeren. In J. Soeharno & K. Algra (Eds.), Plagiaat in onderzoek en onderwijs (pp. 25-32). VSNU.