The authentication programs available to the modern scientific
publishing company make the potential for blatant plagiarism of an entire
scholarly article seem a thing of the past. But earlier this year, professor of
pharmacology and toxicology Sidney Stohs, PhD, learned that isn’t necessarily
so. An article he co-authored, titled “A Review of the Efficacy and Safety of
Banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa L.) and Corosolic Acid,”1 appeared
online with a different title and authors. The Stohs et al. review was published online in November 2011 by Phythotherapy Research. Nearly one year
later, in October 2012, Hindawi Publishing Corporation’s Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
electronically published “Management of Diabetes and Its Complications with Banaba (Lagerstroemia
speciosa L.) and Corosolic Acid”2 by Toshihiro Miura, Satoshi
Takagi, and Torao Ishida of the Suzuka University of Medical Science in Japan.
According to Dr. Stohs,
besides the alteration of the title, the only features that set the allegedly
plagiarized article apart from the original were one additional reference and
adherence to a different style sheet.
“Much time had been expended
reviewing the literature and ultimately summarizing the literature in the form
of the very detailed review that included 56 references,” said Dr. Stohs of his
Phytotherapy Research article (email
communication, February 19, 2013). “[Miura et
al.] made very few changes. They changed the name of the article and the
format to fit the journal style, and simply added our article as reference #57
with the number being inserted in the text at the end of the second-from-the-last
sentence of the Conclusions section. The rest of their plagiarized version
was a word-for-word copy of our article including all the subheadings and
sections.”
Hindawi Publishing Company is
headquartered in Cairo, Egypt, with an additional office in New York City.
According to its website, Hindawi publishes 486 journals — Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine among them — that
“maintain the highest standards of peer review.”3 The corporation is
a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE is “a forum for editors and
publishers of peer reviewed journals to discuss all aspects of publication
ethics. [COPE] also advises editors on how to handle cases of research and
publication misconduct.”4
Once made aware of the striking
similarity between its article and Stohs et
al.’s, “[t]he journal moved quickly to have the [online] HTML version
stamped with ‘Retracted.’ They also indicated to the authors that they would
never be allowed to publish in a journal published by Hindawi [Publishing
Corporation], including the journal in question,” said Dr. Stohs.
“However, there is no indication on
the PubMed abstract that it has been retracted,” continued Dr. Stohs, referring
to the questionable article’s official abstract on the US National Library of
Medicine’s PubMed database. “Furthermore,”
he added, “although the Hindawi [Publishing Corporation] version of the full
plagiarized manuscript has ‘Retracted’ stamped on it, several other versions
are still available with no such designation. The editor indicated that once
there is a DOI number and it is registered, they have no further control.” (A
DOI, or digital object identifier, is a string of characters that identifies an
electronic document or other object.)
Hindawi’s
policy on plagiarism is outlined on its website as follows:5
Manuscripts that are
found to have been plagiarized from a manuscript by other authors, whether
published or unpublished, will incur plagiarism sanctions. The following
plagiarism sanctions will be applied:
·
Immediate rejection of the infringing manuscript.
·
Immediate rejection of every other manuscript submitted to any
journal published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation by any of the authors of
the infringing manuscript.
·
Prohibition against all of the authors for any new submissions to
any journal published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation, either individually or
in combination with other authors of the infringing manuscript, as well as in
combination with any other authors.
·
Prohibition against all of the authors from serving on the
Editorial Board of any journal published by Hindawi Publishing Corporation.
According to
attorney Rakesh Amin of Amin-Talati — a Chicago law firm specializing in
regulatory issues and intellectual property — in a situation such as this one, legal
claims such as copyright infringement as well as unfair competition and
deceptive practices could be brought against both the publisher and the authors
of the allegedly plagiarized article (email communication, February 25, 2013). But,
in this particular case, because both the publishing company and the authors of
the allegedly plagiarized article are not American, international legal action would
be more complex and expensive.
“[If the authors] were located in the USA, I would be working with their
academic institutions to have them removed (fired) from their academic
positions,” said Dr. Stohs. “To date, I have not pursued this option with
their Japanese institutions, but we are considering doing so.”
As of press time, Hindawi Publishing Corporation had not responded to questions
from HerbalEGram.
—Ash Lindstrom
References
1. Stohs SJ, Miller H, Kaats, GR. A review of the efficacy and safety of banaba
(Lagerstroemia speciosa L.) and corosolic acid. Phytother Res. 2012 Mar;26(3):317-24.
2. Miura T, Takagi S, Ishida T. Management of diabetes and Its complications
with banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa L.) and corosolic acid. Evid
Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012:871495. doi: 10.1155/2012/871495. Epub 2012
Oct 2. Available at: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3468018/. Accessed February 26, 2013.
3. About us. Hindawi Publishing Corporation Website. Available at: www.hindawi.com/about/. Accessed February 25, 2013. 4. Homepage. Committee on Publication Ethics website. Available at: http://publicationethics.org/. Accessed February 25, 2013. 5.
Policy on Plagiarism, Duplicate Publication, and Citation Manipulation. Hindawi
Publishing Corporation website. Available at www.hindawi.com/policies/.
Accessed February 25, 2013.
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