One of the most contemptible plagiarism scandals UD has encountered features the same character most of these scandals feature: The Junior Colleague. The eminent senior guy accused of having stolen reams of articles published under his name speaks darkly of an incompetent uncontrollable underling… Can’t recall her name. Don’t know where she is now…
The mythic research assistant is merely one component of the Serge Valentin Pangou story, a story which features a senior scientist tearing through one ecology journal after another (including one published by the notoriously cheesy outfit Elsevier) with articles copied from other sources and co-authored by people as mythical as the Junior Colleague. I mean, the co-authors existed… Pangou had even met them once or twice. But all were surprised to find out they’d authored anything with Pangou. All must also be thrilled that their names are now trashed by association.
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Update: Some of the comments on this page, from Retraction Watch, are of interest.
March 11th, 2012 at 6:08PM
Of note, five of the papers in question appeared in journals published by International Research Journals, a company that Jeffrey Beall has included in his list of “predatory open access publishers.”
Oh God, I didn’t realize things were so bad that a list of predatory open access publishers existed already. Silly me.