|
|
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/asap... p/pdf/jp079533l.pdf
Ethical Responsibilities for Authors in The Journal of Physical
Chemistry
I recently took the step of retracting from the scientific record a letter
published in
The Journal of Physical Chemistry C, an action that I feel merits comment for
the
readers of our journal, as it is emblematic of a type of author misconduct
that we as
research professionals must seek to avoid if we are to uphold the integrity
of the
scientific literature. The letter in question was a publication by Fang et
al., J. Phys.
Chem. C 2007, 111, 1065-1070. After publication of the letter, it was brought
to our
attention that the paper by Fang et al., as submitted and subsequently
published by
the journal after peer review, included a number of figures that duplicated
those
contained within previously published papers by other authors and that were
used
without proper attribution or explicit permission from the copyright holders
of record.
In particular, material was used from papers by Yu et al., J. Phys. Chem. B
2006,
110, 21667-21671, and from Park et al., Nat. Mater. 2004, 3, 891-895, without
appropriate citation or acknowledgement by the authors, with the result that
our readers
could be misled as to the origin of the data and the originality of the work
as presented
in this journal. I judged such misconduct by the authors to constitute a
serious instance
of plagiarism.
Given the severity of this violation by the authors, and in light of the
American
Chemical Society’s Ethical Guidelines to Publication of Chemical Research
(http://
pubs.acs.org/ethics), I took the unusual step of requesting an editorial
retraction. This
entailed the following actions: (1) the full text of the letter was removed
from the J.
Phys. Chem. C web site at the ACS and (2) an Addition and Correction notice
was
published in the journal (in both the print and online editions) and linked
to the
bibliographic record of the retracted text, in order to notify our readership
that the
letter was retracted and should therefore not be relied upon or cited further
in the
scientific literature.
Let me point out that the responsibilities of authors on matters of
plagiarism are
delineated clearly in the aforementioned ACS Ethical Guidelines. In
particular, item
B.9 states that “An author should identify the source of all information
quoted or
offered”. I regard violations of this guideline as extremely serious and
decisive action,
including appropriate editorial sanctions, will be taken when such
infractions are
identified. To do anything less would betray the trust of the many authors,
reviewers,
and readers within the scientific community who work so diligently to uphold
the
integrity of the peer-reviewed scholarship that The Journal of Physical
Chemistry
seeks to disseminate and archive.
George C. Schatz
Editor-in-Chief
10.1021/jp079533l CCC: $37.00 |
|
发表于 2007-8-14 21:15:21
