Emerging plagiarism in peer-review evaluation reports: a tip of the iceberg?

Mikołaj Piniewski (), Ivan Jarić (), Demetris Koutsoyiannis () and Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz ()
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Mikołaj Piniewski: Warsaw University of Life Sciences
Ivan Jarić: Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, AgroParisTech, Ecologie Systématique Evolution
Demetris Koutsoyiannis: National Technical University of Athens
Zbigniew W. Kundzewicz: Poznań University of Life Sciences

Scientometrics, 2024, vol. 129, issue 4, No 24, 2489-2498

Abstract: Abstract The phenomenon of plagiarism in peer-review evaluation reports remained surprisingly unrecognized, despite a notable rise of such cases in recent years. This study reports multiple cases of peer-review plagiarism recently detected in 50 different scientific articles published in 19 journals. Their in-depth analysis reveals that such reviews tend to be nonsensical, vague and unrelated to the actual manuscript. The analysis is followed by a discussion of the roots of such plagiarism, its consequences and measures that could counteract its further spreading. In addition, we demonstrate how increased availability and access to AI technologies through recent emergence of chatbots may be misused to write or conceal plagiarized peer-reviews. Plagiarizing reviews is a severe misconduct that requires urgent attention and action from all affected parties.

Keywords: Plagiarism; Peer-review; Publication ethics; Scientific misconduct; Chatbot (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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DOI: 10.1007/s11192-024-04960-1

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