Fake Journals

Now we not only have fake conferences and invented publications. If you have enough money (as pharmaceutical companies do), you can just purchase your own fancy-schmancy, scientific-sounding journal from a reputable publisher. Or shall we say, previously reputable. Now that six of their thousands of journals have been identified as fakes, maybe we should just assume that the rest are also problematic and proceed to take our papers to Open Access journals.

But let's start at the top. Many blogs (such as bioethics.net) and The Scientist reported that pharmaceutical company Merck was behind the "Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine". It looked like a real journal. It had real-looking articles in it, although they were reprints or summaries of other journal's research, all strangely enough favorable about Merck products. Summer Johnson on the bioethics blog points out the problem with this:

What’s wrong with this is so obvious it doesn’t have to be argued for. What’s sad is that I’m sure many a primary care physician was given literature from Merck that said, “As published in Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, Fosamax outperforms all other medications….” Said doctor, or even the average researcher wouldn’t know that the journal is bogus. In fact, knowing that the journal is published by Elsevier gives it credibility!

Right. Elsevier used to be a respected name in scientific publishing. The Guardian quotes a spokesman as saying that the publisher does not consider this a journal, as it is a compilation of reprinted articles. Then why does it have the word "Journal" in its title?

Laika's MedLibLog goes on to explain how some of the articles that were reprinted got themselves published in the first place: the company sponsors the research, and then employees of the company offer manuscripts to the academic investigators, who put their name on the paper (and sometimes forget the footnote explaining who paid for the research). So we have a "journal" with reprints of ghostwritten articles.

The Scientist has now found 6 similar journals:

• the Australasian Journal of General Practice
• the Australasian Journal of Neurology
• the Australasian Journal of Cardiology
• the Australasian Journal of Clinical Pharmacy
• the Australasian Journal of Cardiovascular Medicine, and
  
• the Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine.
  

Elsevier would not tell The Scientist the names of the companies sponsoring these titles.

Yes, the mother company regrets what its Australia division has been up to. And the people responsible apparently don't work there any more.

But how can we know for sure that the next Elsevier journal that we hold in our hands is legit? That it declares all of its interests and who paid for and wrote the research?

Can we now declare the peer-review system for journal articles officially broken? Can we also quit counting number of articles and impact factors and just have people submit the 3 of 5 most important papers they have written when they are evaluated?

Oh, the Elsevier statement is linked from their home page....

Invented Publications

The German news magazine Spiegel reports on a major scandal at the University of Göttingen. An interdisciplinary group of sixteen scientists researching the rain forest in Indonesia had previously been awarded a prestigious "Sonderforschungsbereich" (SFB) by the German research foundation, DFG. The researchers were applying for an 8.6 million Euro extension of the research project.

But the external reviewers were quite irritated - they couldn't find many of the supposed publications listed on the report for how the first grant had been used. After an internal university investigation, it was determined that the publications did not, in fact, exist. The university withdrew the grant application.

There will now be more exact scrutiny of the money spent up until now, and whether it was used for the research or for other purposes. And another research group at the same university on biodiversity is currently under investigation for similar problems, according to the university president, who is worried as to how these incidents will affect the reputation of the university.

The University of Göttingen has been awarded "elite" status by the German government. On the one hand, it is questionable if this status is compatible with such goings-on, especially if they are regularly happening. On the other hand, the university is acting correctly in investigating the cases and in withdrawing the application. One wonders how many universities just sweep things like this under the carpet after rapping the knuckles of the parties involved.

One does, however, hope that the principle investigators will be degraded to cleaning toilets or some such punishment and not continue researching at full pay. I can't find a statement about the situation on the home pages of the university, but I do see that there will be a seminar on reputation management this coming week. I suppose the university will be sending someone to audit the course.

Plagiarism Resource Site

I stumbled upon the archives of the Colby, Bates, and Bowdoin (CBB) Plagiarism Resource Site. This site was developed between 2003 and 2007. There is an interesting collection of materials available, licensed under a Creative Commons license that lets other schools use the materials if they are used non-commercially, with attribution, and the resulting materials are also put under the same license.

It is a shame that the site has not been able to continue its development, but there are many good things to be found here for people who believe as I do: Teach, don't police.

Nobel Laureate accused of plagiarism

The Märkische Oder Zeitung (among others, it is a dpa story) reports that the Spanish Nobel Laureate for Literature Camilo Jose Cela (1916-2002) has been accused of plagiarism.

A judge in Barcelona has determined that there is enough evidence that the novel "La cruz de San Andrés" (The San Andrés Cross) for which he was awarded the Spanish literary prize "Planeta" in 1994, is similar to a novel by the relatively unknown author Maria del Carmen Formoso. The newspaper "El País" reports on April 21 that the judge's decision is based on an expertise prepared by a scholar of literature.

The court case is being brought against the publishing house Planeta, since Cela died in 2002. Formoso hat submitted her work to the prize committee two months in advance of Cela's submission. Formoso accused the publisher of giving her novel to Cela so that he could use it as a basis for his own work.

Formoso has been fighting for 10 years to get legal recognition of her case. She has twice lost cases in lower courts, but in 2006 the spanish constitutional court ordered a new trial. The court in Barcelona was requested to decide whether sufficient evidence is given to re-open the trial, which they now have done.

A Lesson Plan for Teaching about Plagiarism

I purchased a copy of the book "Student Plagiarism in an Online World - Problems and Solutions", XXX, 2008 by Tim S. Roberts (Ed.) for my research group despite the outrageous price (180$). 

I have previously blogged my opinion that XXX is a write-only publisher, and when I hold the book in my hands, it becomes even clearer. The book is hard-cover, in an impossibly large format, and very badly bound. At that price, I want a book that is well-bound and lies flat for use. There is no trace of the promised "free" online access to the text, which is a shame, as I could have used it today. 

Many of the chapters are long-winded or repetitive, that is, they could have used some tighter editing. But there are quite a number of good ideas to be found here and the references sections are quite extensive. 

The chapter by Frankie Wilson and Kate Ippolito, supposedly of Brunel University in the UK, although I find no home page or email for them there, contains an excellent lesson plan for a seminar about plagiarism. 

I decided at short notice to ditch my normal slideshow about plagiarism that I give to our first semester students and gave it a try, although the materials promised to be at a particular school page are not available (they return a 404). 

Our session is 90 minutes, and since we had not had an introductiory session yet, I spent 30 minutes with introductions of me and the students among themselves. This helped break the ice - everyone had already had to stand up and say something. 

We began by collecting definitions on index cards from the students on what their definition of plagiarism is. I made this into an individual exercise, in the plan given this is to be group work. I read them aloud and collected the high points on the board. About a quarter of the 32 people participating could not come up with a definition, and many focussed their definition on product plagiarism only. 

We then began to discuss "where to draw the line". We did this in plenum instead of in small groups, and this ended up being a lively discussion with excellent questions being voiced from the students. A major concern was: but how do I know what the source is, I just "know" something, I don't remember where I read it. We had a good conversation about note-taking and finding confirming evidence for that which one thinks one knows. 

The last section dealt with plagiarism avoidance - how a paper gets developed (and I got some words in on that ancient thing called a l-i-b-r-a-r-y) and the different kinds of references: direct quotation, indirect quotation, secondary source. 

 I then distributed 10 magazines and books to groups and have them find how references are used in these. I chose a selection of magazines and books that have different reference structures. They were very quick to identify these, and spent a few minutes glancing through the material that they had. 

We needed just 60 minutes, although the discussions were going so well that I am sure that we could have made it much longer. I would have liked to have had the worksheet promised in the chapter, but the lesson plan is well enough done that it can easily be adapted. 

I will post an update if I manage to find the material, I have written to the school asking for current emails of the authors and/or a current URL for the material.

Contract Cheating

Some interesting articles have shown up recently about the topic of "contract cheating" - students using Web 2.0 bidding sites to find a lowest bidder willing to do their homework for them for a price. Often, the coders or writers are to be found in developing countries.

• Thomas Bartlett, Cheating Goes Global as Essay Mills Multiply - From Virginia to Manila: on the trail of papers for cash, The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 20, 2009
• Jessica Shepard, History essay in the making, The Guardian, May 6, 2008
• Robert Clarke and Thomas Lancaster, Contract Cheating Information Centre
• Clark and Lancaster have some great resources available, for example these screen shots of contract cheating in action or a list of 138 (!!) sites that offer the possibility of hiring a contractor. They have also set up an entry in Wikipedia on the topic.
  

In German, Spiegel Online author Sebastian Wieschowski has also reported on this phenomenon: Bestnoten mit Billigcode aus Bangladesch (good grades with cheap code from Bangladesch).

German University Takes Back Nine Doctorates

According to the German online magazine Spiegel Online, the University of Hanover has taken back nine doctorates in law which were granted between 1998 and 2005.

A law professor, Thomas A., from the university had taken in much money from lawyers and judges who wanted to have the coveted "Dr." to put in front of their names. Unlike the States, where the President, Vice President, and First Lady all have JD degrees but don't get called "Dr.", in Germany you can have the title put on your passport, bolted on your door, and make everyone call you "Dr. X".

At least eight lawyers (a number of them public servants and district attorneys) and one judge so desperately coveted that title - but didn't have the time to do the work - that they engaged a "doctoral consultant". They paid the company, in this case the "Institut für Wissenschaftsberatung" in Bergisch Gladbach, a fee, the company bribed the law professor, and they were soon awarded their degrees.

Fifty-nine more cases are pending.

Prof. A. took in over 150,000 Euros from candidates, receiving 2000 Euros for accepting a candidate and getting a bonus of 2000 Euros when it was completed. The potential doctors paid up to 25,000 Euros for their titles, for which there is normally no fee assessed.

A. was taken to court and found guilty of being bribed. He was sentenced to three years in prison, which is enough so that he loses his pension as well. The scam came to light as students requested in 2004 that A. not be on their examining committee because they did not want to appear to have purchased their grades. The university informed the legal authorities, who began an investigation. In September 2007 Prof. A. admitted to his deeds. During the court case in Hildesheim it was discovered that he not only took money, but also sexual favors for better grades.

The company is now bankrupt and the consultant, Martin D., has been in prison since the middle of last year on charges of bribery. He was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison.

The university decided to take back the nine doctorates, although most certainly most of the people involved will be taking the university to court on it - one has already filed, in the desperate hopes of overturning the university
decision on a technicality. Having to explain why the doctorate has suddenly disappeared might put a damper in one's career, although the person who had his doctorate taken back from the University of Tübingen on charges of blatant plagiarism has just gone to another university and taken a doctorate there. That university sees no problems with this.