Hi Bosco, Basilio and others, Thank you-all for your constructive posts on this thread. As you-all demonstrate, one can have a very informative dialogue without personalizing the issues. My last post giving the example of what occurs in medical training was written before your posts. So any one of you can respond / comment on my post of medical students and resident training. Hopefully you can give us SPECIFIC PRACTICE PATTERNS in your field of education.
You may be surprised about the title of this particular post. However in the medical field, "self-plagiarism" (for want of a better term) is currently a bigger concern and offense than plagiarism. Self-plagiarism is when an scientist / doctor, especially in academics, writes / presents the same (similar or part of the) data or subject matter again and again in different journals (from time to time). This practice expands the authors' bibliography and "pads" their resumes, without adding to the science. Academic compensation, professorial appointments and promotions are connected to extent of publications. Scientists called it "Publish or Perish". I have seen senior academic doctors concerned about this requirement. Junior scientists with more energy do more research, publish and can outdo their professors. Self-plagiarism is frowned on by colleagues in the field. This is because, the practice deprives the journal-editors with limited journal pages from accepting other individual's scientific papers. IMO, the practice is now shifted to give credit to the (previously) published paper that is quoted by subsequent papers. So now there is an abuse of endless quoting of papers for the same conclusion. Thus now all colleagues, including possibly the reviewers, are repeatedly mentioned in a paper. Yet this may be "scratching one-another's back". Some may not like to accept such abuse. But when money, prestige and promotions are involved, strange things happen. I am not claiming all in research and publications have bad motivations. Yet these individuals are forced go along with the practice patterns, even though it (the new pattern) may be packaged under a pious (giving credit) and / or threatening (legal action) label. In terms of getting information from the net, there is software available (as used by the publisher of our novel "On Thin Ice") which blocks 'copy and paste' from e-books or e-articles. Thus authors have technology to protect their copyright work, if they so choose. Basilio talked about the controversy of "DaVinci Code" book. The plaintiff lost the case. Yet they got the publicity for their work. Now quite a few major pharmaceutical companies sue generic drug companies of plagiarism of the patented drug, which the latter claim they can manufacture. The cases have settled out of court. The generic company agrees with the major company not to manufacture the drug, in return for being paid a few million dollars. The major drug company is permitted to market the patented drug for a few more years without any competition. The one who pays are the patients who have no choice but to buy the highly expensive drug even after it has run out of its patent. Likely many in India have followed this discussion as it relates to AIDS medications. Next post: The practice of providing references in medical publications. Kind Regards, GL
