In a recent article (Science 2009; 323: 1293), 163 instances of potential plagiarism were investigated by contacting the authors and editors and guaranteeing anonymity. The response rate was 90% and 93% of authors of the original articles were not aware that their work had been plagiarized. Responses from those guilty parties were as follows:

-28% denied doing anything wrong

-35% admitted to plagiarizing and apologized

-22% blamed it on their coauthors

-17% were not aware that they were listed as authors on the guilty articles

As a result of the survey, 46 investigations were launched. 50% of journals contacted did nothing because they lacked knowledge as what to do, considered the situation to be too stressful, or were afraid that it may reflect poorly on the journal’s review process. The impact factors of the original journals average 3.87 while that of the journals publishing the duplicate data was 1.6. Duplicate articles have a high chance of citations over time as PubMed searches by default return the most recent articles first. AJNR has a policy on Duplicate Publication that lead to PubMed retraction of one article last year.