A thief stealing ideas

Journals need to provide better guidance for victims of plagiarism

By / Stories / 25. 3. 2024

“Academics and researchers are ill prepared for what to do when they’re victims of publication misconduct“, say authors of an article published by BMJ.com, whose work has been plagiarised multiple times. They describe the struggle with their defense against plagiarism: the publisher of the plagiarised paper first didn’t respond at all, and took some action only after an …

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Handy hints for ‘whistleblowers’ of misconduct and malpractice in HE

By / Blog / 31. 7. 2023

Higher Education (HE) organisations are essential public service sectors focusing on research and research-informed teaching. In many countries, HE is self-regulated, having its own institutional policies and guidelines. Therefore, they mostly avoid external accountability for internal conflicts, malpractice, or misconduct. Any reported conflicts are usually ‘handled’ by the appointed members at the managerial or executive …

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To speak or not to speak

By / Stories / 22. 6. 2023

Jack Grove (2023). ‘This might tank my career’: Pruitt accuser on whistleblowing. Times Higher Education. Accessed on 15th June 2023 – link   What would you do if you realised that some of your published co-authored papers have inconsistent data, most likely due to data fabrication or falsification? Would you report it? Would you be …

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The role models of my academic life and the teaching of medical humanities

By / Blog / 30. 5. 2023

My academic path was deeply marked by two people I would like to pay tribute to. The surgeon, Amadeu Pimenta, a “humanistic doctor”, who was one of my internship supervisors in the last year of my degree, and Isabel Azevedo, a doctor and my PhD supervisor. With the former I was able to closely observe …

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How I Met with Contract Cheating

By / Blog / 24. 3. 2023

Academic integrity is a fundamental principle that universities and educational institutions require students to uphold. All students are expected to complete their work and submit original assignments, papers, and dissertations reflecting their learning and knowledge. Unfortunately, some students and academics do not adhere to these standards and engage in academic dishonesty, such as contract cheating …

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Is ChatGPT changing everything now?

By / Blog / 24. 2. 2023

Efforts to safeguard academic integrity and fair assessment received a new challenge in November 2022, with ChatGPT, artificial intelligence entering the market in a usable form as a chatbot, which no one at educational institutions had expected until recently. I still remember Elisabeth Bik’s wonderful keynote at the European Conference on Academic Integrity and Plagiarism …

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What to do when AI tools publish papers under your name?

By / Stories / 16. 2. 2023

“Leading international scientists who discovered articles written by artificial intelligence that have been published in their name have backed plans for legal action.” Jack Grove. Identity theft victims back legal action against journals. Times Higher Education, 2nd February 2023. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/identity-theft-victims-back-legal-action-against-journals Accessed: 16th February 2023   Recently, concerns have been raised by the scientific community over …

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A Call for Whistleblowers

By / Stories / 16. 2. 2023

When Matthew Schrag (a neurologist at Vanderbilt University, USA) shocked the Alzheimer disease’s scientific community in 2022 with claims of significant misconduct on a leading paper in the field (2006), it opened the eyes to a problem that has long been rooted in the scientific community, and not just in neurosciences. Why took it 16 …

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Contract cheating – a problem that probably won’t cool down anytime soon

By / Blog / 20. 1. 2023

Are you reading a paper and suspect that the paper was not written by the person who submitted it? This problem is global and it is not easy to detect or to prove. If such a paper is evaluated without establishing that it was not written by the person who submitted it, then it is …

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My pathway to Research Integrity and prevention of Scientific Misconduct

By / Blog / 18. 11. 2022

To this day I vividly remember my fascinating but very complicated work related to my PhD thesis. My research was devoted to Old Polish literature, so I spent most of my time in long-established libraries, which had very unique, special atmosphere. Of course, there were many difficulties during this time. Especially complicated was the research …

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