A large U.S. university press has stopped selling two scholarly books about the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and John Venn due to problems with how the authors cited – or didn’t cite – source material. 

In both cases, the University of Chicago Press stated on its website that the titles, released in 2023 and 2022, respectively, were “no longer available for sale.” But only “John Venn: A Life in Logic” by Lukas M. Verburgt was “retracted,” according to the publisher.

The author of the other publication – “How Slavoj Became Žižek: The Digital Making of a Public Intellectual” – told us he had been afforded a chance to fix his mistakes. These included “several insufficient, missing, or erroneous citations of source material upon which the author builds his argument,” the University of Chicago Press stated.

“The publisher has given me the opportunity to correct the book and resubmit it for review,” said Eliran Bar-El, a sociologist at the University of York, in England. “In light of it being an ongoing process, I cannot provide further details until there is a review outcome, which will be reflected appropriately in my publication list. At this time, I would like to genuinely thank the observant readers who have brought this to my attention.”

Verburgt, whose work contains “numerous instances of insufficiently cited source material,” does not appear to have been quite as lucky. 

“I regret the fact that it has not been possible to revise and rectify,” Verburgt, a research and project associate at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, in Amsterdam, wrote on his website. “This has saddened me deeply, also since the consequences have taken a serious toll on me, in different ways.”

The University of Chicago Press declined to comment on the two cases.

On his website, Verburgt said he accepted the decision to pull his book. He explained that he made use “of a 2007 dissertation in several of the biographical chapters” and had not been “as careful as I should have been in ensuring accurate referencing at all places. I’m very sorry about this, especially to the author of the dissertation.”

He did not identify the dissertation in question. But in his book, he acknowledged his debt to the authors of two PhD dissertations, only one of which – “Intersecting Sets: John Venn, Church and University, 1834-1923” by Michelle Clewlow – was published in 2007. 

Clewlow declined to comment. Her former supervisor at the Open University, John Wolffe, told us:

I was not previously aware of this matter, but naturally concerned to learn about it as The Open University does take plagiarism very seriously. However, Dr Clewlow tells me that she does not want to comment herself, and especially as I have not seen the book, I will follow her lead and not offer further comment.  

Verburgt, who did not respond to our requests for comment, wrote on his website:

In the process of repeatedly revising the manuscript – over the course of a period of many years – several things have gone amiss. 

The crucial final stages came at a time of great personal turmoil for me and my family. On another level, I’ve always been explicit and open about the importance of the dissertation for the book. I’ve hid neither my debt to the dissertation itself nor its significance for the biographical chapters, which sometimes went beyond my immediate expertise: I’ve referred to it multiple times and also mentioned it explicitly in the acknowledgments. This does not justify the lack of accurate referencing. What it does show is that this inaccuracy has, of course, not been deliberate. I’ve been negligent, but never had malign intentions.

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