What to Do When You Have Suspect Translational Plagiarism? - Editor’s View

Izet Masic

Editor and Co-Editor of this journal was informed from anonymous reader that article which was published in Medical Archives in 2001 „Psychotherapeutic Testimony by Refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina: a Pilot Study” (in Bosnian language) has been already published in „American Journal of Psychiatry“ under the title „Testimony Psychotherapy in Bosnian Refugees: a Pilot Study“, in 1998. (1, 2).

Editor of Medical Archives verified and checked content of both articles (article from Bosnian language was translated to English). It has been noticed that title of article is also subtitle of other article. Both articles were checked with plagiarism software solutions for plagiarism detection (Figure 1 (a, b, c, d)), and plagiarism cannot be detected.

Figure 1 (a, b,c,d). Screenshots of the facts about Alma Dzubur’s papers.

Editorial Board asked Committee of Publishing Ethics (COPE) for advice what to do in this case, and Editor received opinion of the COPE experts. Editorial Board followed algorithm for this situation according to COPE guidelines. We have concluded:

Abstracts of both articles in English language are almost identical. However, after we translated second article (published in the journal Medical Archives, as a supplement which contain Congress proceedings), and when both texts were evaluated by software for plagiarism checker, it was determined that the content of the article, after translation into English, shows that they are not the same, and that by percentage it is not possible to conclude that it is a case of plagiarism.

Author of the article in the article from 2001 in reference cited the article from 1998. (under number eight) on which the article is based.

In the propositions of the aforementioned Congress, it was not stated that the work must be original, but that it can also be applied with article which deals with the topic, which would be an interesting to auditorium.

Mistake of the author is that they did not change the abstract and they did not add a statement at the end of the article about conflict of interest (Conflict of interest: the part of the research was previously published in the American Journal of Psychiatry).

Since both articles have been published twenty years ago, when clear rules did not exist (ICMJE, COPE), and there were no software solutions for verifying the use of others or own previously published text without quoting it according to the rules, we believe that this is not the case of plagiarism. We can talk about “salami publishing” in case that the author published the article in the regular issue of the journal, but since this is a case of publishing in Supplement for the Congress, the claim that this article is a case of plagiarism is rejected (3, 4). In view of all of the above, the article published in the Medical Archives in 2001 (note that at that time none of the journals had a software solution that could detect any form of plagiarism) cannot be labeled as plagiarism, and the retraction of the mentioned article (although only available as a summary), will not be executed. This article can be a good example for other editors if they have a similar problem. It is noted that the Editorial Board has followed all of the COPE guidelines, and that COPE has been notified of the problem itself.