Following a complaint from a reader, editors at the U.S.-based publisher Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) determined the researchers behind two decade-old papers had committed “self-plagiarism,” charges the authors deny, Retraction Watch has learned.
However, IEEE passed the buck on to Elsevier, which published one of the articles a month after IEEE had published the other. Elsevier, in turn, said it is wrapping up its investigation and will make the conclusions public “once final.” And one of the authors said a corrigendum is in the works.
The studies share three authors, including last author Li-Qun Zhang, a professor in the Department of Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation Science at University of Maryland School of Medicine, and both focused on movement of the knee as it relates to people with osteoarthritis.
Real-Time Knee Adduction Moment Feedback Training Using an Elliptical Trainer was published online November 14, 2013, in IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, whereas Real-time tracking of knee adduction moment in patients with knee osteoarthritis appeared online December 19 of that same year in Elsevier’s Journal of Neuroscience Methods. Only the latter title states when it first received the manuscript, which was on June 10, 2013.
In September 2023, someone who identified himself to Retraction Watch as a friend of someone who has worked with Zhang in the past raised concerns about “self-plagiarism” to Daniel Ferris, the former editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, after noticing “substantial overlapped contents, contexts, and conclusions” between the two articles.
The friend told Retraction Watch:
The overlaps are significant, so I did not elaborate the details one by one. Before reporting, we posted those two papers on a public website (ResearchGate) to see how people thought about them. Most of them said like the authors merely changed the title.
In December 2023, Ferris responded to the friend, stating that an independent committee of associate editors reviewed the complaint and the authors had been informed. After examining the evidence, “the committee came to the conclusion that self-plagiarism had been committed as some data had been re-used and there was considerable overlap in the papers,” Ferris told the friend.
Ferris also stated the journal would take an “appropriate action” as a result of the situation. But when Retraction Watch contacted Ferris about what this action might be, he told us:
The journal followed IEEE policy as outlined in the IEEE operations manual (https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/section-822.html). After following procedures to get a response from the authors and forming a committee to review the allegations, a report was sent to the IEEE Publications office. They determined that because the IEEE TNSRE paper was first, there was no misconduct under the jurisdiction of IEEE.
Giuseppe Di Giovanni, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Neuroscience Methods, told Retraction Watch the “case is still in progress.”
Megan Monachino, Senior Publisher of Life Sciences for Elsevier, added:
We are in the final stages of our investigation. At this stage, the details of the case are confidential; however, the conclusion will be made part of the publication record once final.
Meanwhile, Zhang denies the allegations, but said a corrigendum is in the works. He told Retraction Watch:
The first paper with IEEE (Kang et al.,2013) was on the methodology development of real-time knee moment determination with experimental corroborations on healthy subjects, while the second JNM paper was on subsequent clinical study of patients with knee osteoarthritis and biomechanical changes with knee OA. The differences can be seen in the Results figures of the two papers. The lists of authors for the two papers were also different. However, the Methods section of the second paper was similar to that of the first (Kang et al.,2013). Since the computations involved in the studies were complex, and to facilitate readers, the key method and procedure were described in a simplified manner in the second JNM paper. To avoid confusion, we did not change the frequently occurring terminologies and symbols in this paper, which also contributed to the overlap (overall 31% similarity between the two papers). Moreover, the first paper (Kang et al.,2013) paper was cited throughout the second paper.
The first paper with IEEE was published electronically in 2013, before the second JNM paper published in 2014. So the self-plagiarism issue is with the second JNM paper. The JNM editor investigated the issue carefully and concluded that there is no case of duplicate publication. However, there is 31% similarity in the text. We have submitted a corrigendum accordingly.
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