The Nightmare Plagiarism Scenario Comes True

A recent article on Retraction Watch tells the story of Svein Åge K. Johnsen and Ingeborg Olsdatter Busterud Flagstad, two researchers from the Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences.

For over a year, the pair have been trying to publish a paper about green entrepreneurship, focusing on “small-scale Norwegian manufacturing companies.”

 In January 2021, the pair submitted it to the International Small Business Journal, a SAGE journal. They rejected the paper without submitting it to peer review. They then submitted to another journal, The Journal of Entrepreneurship, another SAGE journal, which did the same.

Following those rejections, the pair submitted it to Cogent Business & Management, a Taylor & Francis journal, where the paper is still under review.

However, on Christmas Day 2021, the authors got an unpleasant holiday surprise when their paper was published in Vision: The Journal of Business Perspective by a different group of authors. Vision is also a SAGE journal.

Though there were differences between the papers, the most prominent being a switch from Norwegian businesses to ones in India. Otherwise, the verbiage and data was the same.

Johnsen and Flagstad contacted Vision and were quickly contacted by the paper’s lead author, Babin Dhas Devadhasan, who admitted to the plagiarism and said that they “needed a publication in order to submit my thesis.”That author, along with the other authors on the paper, have requested that the paper be retracted. The editor of Vision has agreed and confirmed that it will be retracted. 

However, questions linger about this case. How was Meyer able to obtain a copy of the unpublished paper? Why was a third SAGE journal willing to publish it after two others rejected it? Why was this copying not detected?

Sadly, these are answers we may not get answers to these questions. Though Flagstad said they are in contact with Cogent, there may simply be no way to learn how this happened.

However, one thing is sure, this is a nightmare scenario that many researchers have feared, but are usually told never happens.

A Nightmare Scenario

In 1951, academic and musical satirist first performed the song Lobachevsky. In the song, the narrator becomes one of the most famous mathematicians in the world though plagiarism. 

Specifically, the narrator, after seeking out Lobachevsky’s advice, uses his connections to obtain a copy of a paper before it is published and then beat the real author to the punch.

That, in turn, is almost exactly what happened here. 

Meyer, through means unknown, obtained a copy of the original paper and then, after a few modifications, managed to publish it themselves. But while this type of plagiarism would have been easier in either Lobachevsky’s time or in the 1950s, when Lehrer was singing about it, it should not  be possible in the 2020s. 

Not only do we have access to  technology can detect duplicative text and other issues, but the entire peer review process is supposed to be structured so that it can’t happen. Theoretically, an electronic submission and peer review process should also mean that a perfect trail is created and kept for every work, even those rejected.

But what makes this story even worse is that, of the three journals possibly involved, all are published by SAGE. In short, this plagiarism happened totally within the SAGE system. From original submission, to leak to publication, it all took place at SAGE.

To that end, SAGE desperately needs to determine what happened, who was responsible, how it happened and what they can do to prevent it from occurring again. The process should be as transparent as possible, too.

Anything less sends a strong signal that SAGE has significant issues in this area and that authors should be wary of seeking publications with their journals.

What Can Be Done

Right now, the bulk of the work falls on the shoulders of SAGE itself. The publisher desperately needs to piece together what happened behind the scenes and close avenues both for the leak and for the later publication.

However, it also raises questions for authors. What can they do to protect themselves and their work?
One suggestion that’s routinely given is to pre-print or pre-publish the paper online. Basically, by self-publishing the paper on the internet, it will appear in most plagiarism detection tools and help prevent it from being picked up elsewhere.

However, that comes with drawbacks. First, it means that non-peer-reviewed articles are available to the public. That can lead to confusion and to work that couldn’t pass peer review getting high levels of attention.

More to the point, it may make it easier for others to plagiarize the content. The issue of predatory journals remains, and there are many publications that won’t bother with any plagiarism check as long as their fees are paid. This approach requires that all journals be ethical and perform due diligence on incoming works, something well known to be not true.

Other options could include authors submitting works directly to the plagiarism detection databases themselves. However, there’s no easy way to do that.

Finally, we could require journals to make the plagiarism check one of the first steps in the submission process. This would not only it weed out plagiarism sooner, but it would get those papers into the relevant databases. However, given how many papers are rejected without advancing for peer review, this could be a waste of resources for publications.

In short, there are no easy answers here, and they all rely on other journals and publishers being ethical. That, of course, is not something we can count on.  

Bottom Line

In the end, as scary as this story is, it is still exceedingly rare. This is a type of plagiarism that may have been more common decades ago, but the modern safeguards in place have definitely reduced it.

However, once is still too much and SAGE has numerous questions it needs to answer, at least to the original authors.

Something like this shouldn’t happen at all because it should be impossible. The simple fact that it’s not impossible is going to cause many authors to worry about the issue, likely needlessly, and they may take steps to protect their work that could cause more harm than good.

In reality, this shouldn’t be a top-of-mind worry for most authors. Still, SAGE clearly has some work to do in this space, and here is to hoping the issue is resolved and guardrails are put up to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.