[Air-L] Self-Plagiarism, retracted papers, and collateral damage

Cristian Berrio Zapata cristian.berrio at gmail.com
Fri Aug 3 06:15:29 PDT 2012


I think that we should consider translations as new articles, if our goal
is to free the information flux. The option of translation should be given
to the author and/or the journal. This would have several advantages:

1. Would stimulate the flux of publication from English to other languages
and vice versa. Dissemination of knowledge and ideas would be rewarded, not
just novelty.

2. As said, the English spoken academic world would refresh and the
non-English spoken world would have the possibility of catching up.

3. We would activate the area of translators-editors for multiple languages.

4. That would be more the image of an "information society", investing
resources to make knowledge flux disperse everywhere in every language.

The above should respect of course, citing the original paper in the
original language, just as books do. I believe that some time ago, this was
accepted by journals but later it was abandoned due to this mad competition
about who publishes the latest.

Also, the above would no produce miracles. Even giving preference this kind
of papers, I believe that still not a significant amount of them would be
translated because, that needs resources (i.e. translators, editors).
Brazil had an interesting program that pays for the translation into
English of remarkable works in Portuguese, but that is not common.

Accepting translations as "new papers" maybe would not solve itself the
problem of isolation of the peripheral world academy, but at least, it
would not generate new obstacles to the flux of ideas between our
world-wide different languages.

2012/8/3 michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>

> Very interesting and effective arguments Cristian…****
>
> ** **
>
> What is your suggestion following from these arguments… i.e. how should
> papers be handled coming from non-English speaking researchers?****
>
> ** **
>
> (BTW why not share this with our colleagues on the e-list…****
>
> ** **
>
> M****
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* Cristian Berrio Zapata [mailto:cristian.berrio at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, July 30, 2012 11:42 AM
> *To:* michael gurstein
> *Cc:* Ricardo Santana; Maria Jose Vicentini Jorente
> *Subject:* Re: [ciresearchers] RE: [AISWorld] Self-Plagiarism, retracted
> papers, and collateral damage****
>
> ** **
>
> Dear Mike:****
>
> ** **
>
> You comment raises new doubts to discuss.****
>
> ** **
>
> A. If English language peer reviewed journals reject what has been
> previously published in other languages, then these ideas get marginalized
> or disappear from the scope of the dominant science.****
>
> ** **
>
> B. If non-English-speaking academics turn to write in English, then they
> marginalize a significant number of their audience, giving preference to
> the international dominant science audience. ****
>
> ** **
>
> Taking into account that (1) writing a good paper is a time consuming
> process, (2) that research is not only expensive but also time consuming
> and (3) that theoretical ideas grow slowly under an accumulative process,
> the possibility of writing real "fresh & new papers" is scarce. This
> scarcity would be worsen by the "new material policy" if it is applied in
> deep to papers not originally in English.****
>
> ** **
>
> Diversity would not be favored as academics under the English-spoken world
> would be favored in front of those who are out of it. Non English speakers
> tend to have a very different view to that which is cultivated into the
> dominant science, and that would be lost.****
>
> ** **
>
> In the end, this "new content" policy would tend to interrupt the
> knowledge flux between the central science and the peripheral science,
> producing a paradigmatical effect in the center, and a knowledge divide
> deepening in the periphery. This model, trying to accelerate the advance of
> science via new ideas (in a very industrial way I fear) may get us into
> practices that favor novelty over quality.****
>
> ** **
>
> I hope I am over reacting but, looking at the amount of papers not written
> in English and that would be never translated because they cannot be read,
> cannot be found or cannot be published in English, I believe lots of
> interesting views are lost.****
>
> ** **
>
> Just to finish, I like to clarify that I do not support that all
> non-English-written papers are of quality, but some of them are extremely
> suggestive.****
>
> ** **
>
> Saludos.****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> 2012/7/30 michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>****
>
> As a journal editor I think that you are raising an important issue
> Cristian… The notion is that peer review in journals is meant to be of
> "new" materials and there is an assumption that this includes other
> languages (some journals as a matter of course publish abstracts in several
> languages for precisely this reason… Of course, policing this is a problem
> and as well the dominant position of English cuts in a number of ways for
> other languages…****
>
>  ****
>
> M****
>
>  ****
>
> *From:* Cristian Berrio Zapata [mailto:cristian.berrio at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Monday, July 30, 2012 9:19 AM
> *To:* ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net; michael gurstein
> *Subject:* Re: [ciresearchers] RE: [AISWorld] Self-Plagiarism, retracted
> papers, and collateral damage****
>
>  ****
>
> Very important discussion!****
>
>  ****
>
> I like to introduce the topic of "text translation" here as I am not so
> clear about when it may or may not be Self-Plagiarism.****
>
>  ****
>
> The fact is that due to the visibility problems that a paper written in
> Spanish or Portuguese would have, many of us, Latin Americans try to
> translate our original texts into English, although already published in
> our native languages.****
>
>  ****
>
> On the other hand, if we publish directly in English, and do not attempt
> to republish in Spanish and Portuguese, then we contribute to the knowledge
> divide as still, English proficiency is an academic problem in this region.
> Some local journals are extremely severe about having "fresh unpublished
> works" and may doubt about publishing something already printed by other
> journal, even if it is in English.****
>
>  ****
>
> Working in Brazil but being a Spanish speaker, give the opportunity of
> rewrite a paper in three languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English. But,
> would that not be taken as a self plagiarism practice? How to avoid any
> doubt about this?****
>
>  ****
>
>  ****
>
> 2012/7/30 michael gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>****
>
> Good comments Andy... just one small note... In the 3 or 4 times that this
> has come up with JoCI we have used a 40% rule and also looked at the issue
> of the type of material re-used (as per your point about context setting
> text) and also whether the "point" of the article and thus the analysis and
> conclusions were new/independent of the other published article (I can't
> find the reference at the moment but this is what I/we understood to be the
> usual practice...
>
> M
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Bytheway [mailto:andy.bytheway at gmail.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 3:37 AM
> To: ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net; 'michael gurstein';
> joci-editorial at vancouvercommunity.net
> Subject: RE: [ciresearchers] RE: [AISWorld] Self-Plagiarism, retracted
> papers, and collateral damage
>
> Hi all,
>
> Interesting indeed.
>
> I was at an international management conference recently and there was a
> panel discussion with five or six editors from highly-ranked management
> journals.  I was surprised when they expressed very high levels of concern
> about self-plagiarism and I wanted to challenge them (but I could not get
> my
> chance, they did virtually all the talking … that’s “panels of experts”,
> for
> you!).  Surely, I thought to myself, we frequently want to re-use our work
> that was previously published, in developing our longer-term stream of
> personal publication?  Anyway, I continued in my thoughts, is there not an
> unwritten rule that you can re-use "about 30% of a paper" without problems?
> (Something I heard argued some years ago - I feel the community shuddering
> at this heresy … )
>
> It seems not.  But it is not as simple as that.  Two related issues need
> clarification:
>
> 1       In the cases concerning Lichtenthaler the real concern was that he
> failed to *cross reference* his previous work, thereby deluding the
> reviewers as to the extent of the originality in the later paper(s).  (He
> also admitted to methodological errors, but that is another issue
> altogether).
>
> 2       One needs to be cogniscant of *what* is being re-used.  There is a
> huge difference in re-using contextual material that is common to different
> papers as background, where analysis and discussion then take a
> significantly different perspective on the phenomenon in their main
> sections
> and conclusions.
>
> But then (we heard at the recent conference) there is the seriously
> difficult matter of re-using *research data*.  The panel of editors went on
> to agree that re-use of data is also seriously "off-limits".  I was
> astonished at this supplementary argument.
>
> I suppose if the data is basically statistical, then that might be true (it
> seems clear that Lichtenthaler played around with his data, re-interpreting
> and shifting significance, seemingly in order to achieve a different
> outcome
> or result, and record-breaking publication credits), but if the research
> data is *qualitative*, then I would argue that there are many different
> perspectives that would justify multiple analyses of the same data, over
> and
> over again.  Different a priori and a posteriori coding schemes, for
> example, seeking answers to quite different research questions, which then
> feed further questions.  Endless opportunities to milk the data for
> different purposes (did I really just say "milk the data"? - I hope the
> editors are not reading this [ LoL !]).  In one of our recent projects we
> have 52 transcribed interviews – more than 500 hours of work in the
> transcription, let alone analysing.  This material gives us great potential
> for a range of different analyses, each of which might lead to further
> questions and further analysis.
>
> Personally, I eschew statistical analysis - it requires a shaky abstraction
> of "reality" in terms of the variables that are chosen to be measured, and
> then requires a level of methodological determinism that I find frightening
> (in the social sciences at least).  Life is not like that.  And I find an
> even more frightening determinism in the way that learned journals are
> applying these rules to publication.  Life in research is not like that,
> either.
>
> As argued at one point in the Economics Intelligence blog and discussion
> about Lichtenthaler's recent history (referenced below by Dennis Galletta -
> thanks for that, DG) the IMHO the measure of good research is not whether
> the results are "right", it is whether anyone in the real world benefited
> from it.  And that means “anyone in society" in our domain of CI.
>
> It's an imperfect world, and research should be making it better.  That is
> the real measure of our success.
>
> Andy
>
> ________________________________________
> Andy Bytheway  |  andy.bytheway at gmail.com  |  +27 82 889 9771
> ________________________________________
>
> From: ciresearchers-owner at vancouvercommunity.net
> [mailto:ciresearchers-owner at vancouvercommunity.net] On Behalf Of michael
> gurstein
> Sent: 30 July 2012 00:00
> To: joci-editorial at vancouvercommunity.net;
> ciresearchers at vancouvercommunity.net
> Subject: [ciresearchers] RE: [AISWorld] Self-Plagiarism, retracted papers,
> and collateral damage
>
> Self-plagiarism continues to be an "issue"… although I suspect it is of
> more
> significance in areas of academe where the rewards and pressures for
> publication are rather more intense than in CI.
>
> I'm personally of two minds on the subject… It seems to be a bit "cheap"
> and
> "lazy" but not as egregious an error as these folks seem to be arguing.
>
> Comments.
>
> M
>
> From: aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org
> [mailto:aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org] On Behalf Of Galletta, Dennis
> Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2012 10:28 AM
> To: AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org
> Subject: [AISWorld] Self-Plagiarism, retracted papers, and collateral
> damage
>
> Dear IS Community:
>
> Following up on last year’s discussion of the so-called “Self-Plagiarism”
> concept (regardless of what it is called), three publications by an
> extremely successful business professor from U. of Mannheim have been
> retracted by two journals, including the journal Research Policy. That
> journal is ranked 2nd in a 2004 article on Ranking Technology Innovation
> Management Journals. For details, there is an article posted at the
> following link:
>
> http://economicsintelligence.com/2012/07/19/top-flight-german-business-prof-
> faces-severe-accusations-of-academic-misconduct/
>
> The news article has some very interesting reader comments as well. An
> alarming entry names several other papers and top researchers and accuses
> them of self-plagiarism as well but admits he/she has not read the papers
> in
> depth. This is not a calm situation, to be sure.
>
> Note that the reasons for the retractions also include “severe mathematical
> errors and methodological inconsistencies.” If you’re interested in what
> retracted articles look like, follow these links to two examples:
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004873330800228X
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733309002169
> What is not in this article is some “collateral damage.” I know of a
> strategy professor and his colleagues who had a Revise and Resubmit in the
> same journal. They were very responsive to the reviews, completely
> rewriting
> the paper and doing extensive re-analysis for the 2nd round. Unfortunately,
> some of it was based on a concept of “desorptive capacity” that appeared in
> the retracted papers. The paper has now been rejected because the
> retraction
> destroyed the basis for some of the arguments.
>
> As the bar continues to climb on publication requirements, faculty might be
> becoming more desperate than ever. But the collateral damage is of grave
> concern. Months of work would suddenly become wasted due to the actions of
> others.
>
> DG
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dennis F. Galletta                      Professor of Business
> Administration
> University of Pittsburgh                 and Director, Katz Doctoral
> Program
> 282a Mervis Hall                            Katz Graduate School of
> Business
> Phone +1 412-648-1699                                  Pittsburgh, PA
> 15260
> E-mail: galletta @                                       Fax +1
> 412-648-1693
>         katz.pitt.edu                       homepage:
> www.pitt.edu/~galletta
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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> ****
>
>  ****
>
> --
> *Cristian Berrío Zapata*****
>
>
>
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> --
> *Cristian Berrío Zapata*****
>



-- 
*Cristian Berrío Zapata*



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