Plagirism again, please join the discussion on research gate

[Detmar Meurers]

Dear Valia, and colleagues,

> I personally feel (from the first moment I read the original message)
> extremely uncomfortable that all this sensitive info is being discussed on
> a mailing list, and we are all implicitly/explicitly being asked to pass
> judgements on the scientific deeds and the quality of such deeds of a
> (female) person, and to take sides. Is she a member of any of the lists
> where the original email went to? How can she participate in the
> discussion and get the chance to defend herself, if there is anything to
> defend and if she can? I am really sorry to say this. I strongly believe
> that such issues should be taken to and resolved by justice bodies/courts:
> defaming someone is bad an offence as plagiarism.

if this were about defaming and taking sides, I'd fully agree. But the
thread instead is about discovering and sharing hard evidence that
someone working in the field has systematically copy-pasted an entire
paper and apparently more works.

How is the research community supposed to react to the publication and
electronic distribution of such blatantly plagiarized work if not by
making it public? (Relatedly, journals also publish reviews of other
publications, publicly pointing out their virtues and shortcomings.)
The alternative idea of taking up such an intellectural property
rights case in front of a court as far as I'm aware is not a realistic
solution (e.g., the IPR violation caused no or minimal financial
damage).

It seems crucial to alert the linguistics community that more
attention apparently needs to be paid to the reality of blatant
plagiarism. Until Stefan's post it seemed that nobody would bother to
seriously plagiarize in such a highly-focused, academic field (outside
of student term papers).

Best,
Detmar