An education researcher who had four papers flagged for plagiarism and citation issues threatened to sue the publisher and editors who decided to retract one of the articles, Retraction Watch has learned.
We obtained the emails containing legal threats by Constance Iloh, formerly an assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, through a public records request. Iloh, who was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” top figures in education in 2016 and briefly taught at Azusa Pacific University after leaving Irvine, sued to prevent the university from giving us the emails, but after a two-year legal battle, a state appeals court affirmed the records should be released. That battle is described in more detail in this post.
Following our reporting in August 2020 on the retraction of one of Iloh’s articles for plagiarism, the disappearance of another, and the correction of two more, we requested post-publication correspondence between UCI, Iloh, and the journals where the papers had appeared.
The emails UCI released to us in May of this year shed light on the processes three journals took after concerns were raised about Iloh’s work, and how she responded.
The documents do not indicate UCI had any formal involvement in correcting the scholarly record. Whether the university opened an investigation into allegations of research misconduct is unclear; they told us they were “not in possession of responsive releasable documents” when we requested reports of such an inquiry.
Iloh and her lawyer, Elvin Tabah, have not responded to our request for comment. In a Medium post, Iloh claimed she experienced “academic mobbing and bullying” at UCI, actions that include “attack, harassment, humiliation, trolling, stalking, death threats, doxxing, and even online identity impersonation.” She described anonymous complaints asking the university to investigate her work for plagiarism as “a hit job” and called coverage of the actions journals took with her papers – presumably our posts – “deviant clickbait.”
In response to our previous emails to Iloh offering her an opportunity to comment, another UCI faculty member sent us legal threats, which the university said “were personal and not made on behalf of the University.”
Iloh’s emails with staff at Taylor & Francis, which in 2017 published her article “Paving effective community college pathways by recognizing the Latino post-traditional student,” in the Journal of Latinos and Education, reveal that two years elapsed between the publisher opening an investigation into the article and publishing a retraction notice.
In January 2019, a production editor at Taylor & Francis sent Iloh a PDF copy of her manuscript for her to mark up or submit a list of changes. Iloh replied with an updated manuscript on March 1.
On May 3, the managing editor of the Routledge US Education Journals informed Iloh the publisher had received “feedback [that] inquires about the originality of some sections of text” of her article. The editor offered her “the opportunity to provide clarification on the text in question,” specifically “the decision of the specific material cited (primary versus secondary sources) and the use of direct reproduction of text from sources.”
Iloh responded a few days later. She asked for the “original feedback” to give to her lawyers and said she was not sure what the managing editor was asking of her. “It seems as though you have already made a judgment with ‘decisions’ so I am just not sure specifically what you are asking me to do.”
In the ensuing exchange, the editor gave Iloh multiple opportunities to comment on particular parts of her article and explain “the specific texts used and/or referenced within your article where there is a high degree of similarity.”
Iloh made veiled legal threats at multiple points, claiming the article didn’t go through copy-editing before publication and she had tried to correct it. She wrote:
I have reached out to the journal with edits that I was told would be done and instead, I was accused of making “decisions” on an article the journal acknowledged having published without copy-edits and me ever completing them.
It was also made clear to me “someone” was clearly “out to get” me, so I already have working understanding this matter is more than what is described.
The managing editor’s response gave Iloh a deadline of October 18 to comment on the “textual overlap that was brought to our attention.”
In the next email in the records, dated March 12, 2020, the managing editor informed Iloh of the publisher’s decision to retract the paper due to “significant textual overlap between your article and several other works.” She gave Iloh a week to respond.
Iloh’s responses repeated her claims that the article had not been copy-edited and she should be able to correct the article with added quotation marks and references. She again threatened legal action against the publisher and the whistleblower:
I wish to reiterate legal recourse in event of aforementioned direction from your prior correspondence. I would also like a copy of the original accusation from the “anonymous” so that they and those colluding with them are accordingly dealt with in legal proceedings.
The managing editor replied to Iloh the next week with documentation that the article had indeed been copy-edited and Iloh had made corrections in the process before publication. She explained that the publisher had opened an investigation on Nov. 1, 2018 into “textual similarities in your article we had been alerted to.” She also explained the publisher’s process of reviewing requests to change articles after publication, and that they do not make changes while investigating an article.
Over the next few months, Iloh and the managing editor exchanged more emails in which Iloh repeatedly threatened legal action and called the decision to retract her article “problematic and unlawful.” The managing editor reiterated Taylor & Francis’ decision and policies, including that the changes Iloh had requested “are too extensive for us to publish as a correction notice.”
The retraction notice was published on August 10, and we posted our first story on Iloh later that month.
In subsequent emails, including one sent to Taylor & Francis executives with further threats to sue the company, Iloh accused the journal’s editors of “bias.” She also cited an error in the original retraction notice and claimed that journal staff were “determined to cause harm to me and retract my article, even on faulty grounds.”
Taylor & Francis corrected the retraction notice, which said her 2017 article had “text overlap” with an article she had published in 2019, but otherwise stood by its processes and decision to retract the article in a letter from Jessica Vivian, the global portfolio director in charge of education journals.
Vivian’s letter reviewed the publisher’s documentation that the article had been copy-edited, contrary to Iloh’s claims, and the process they had taken to retract the article and give Iloh an opportunity to explain the textual overlap, which she did not do. The letter also reiterated the company’s plagiarism policy and assessment that “the amount of textual overlap was far too substantial to warrant addressing the textual overlap through a correction.”
“With regards to your allegations of abuse and mishandling of your case,” Vivian wrote, “I would welcome the opportunity to review evidence against this claim. If you have this, please do share that with me at your earliest convenience.”
Vivian sent the letter on September 8, the day we filed our records request, so it is the last document included in the records UCI released to us. We do not know how Iloh may have responded.
The publisher’s investigation “was conducted properly and professionally and we stand by the conclusions of the re-review of this case,” Mark Robinson, corporate media relations manager for Taylor & Francis, told us in an email. “There was a careful investigation into concerns about the article and extensive correspondence with the author, which is why the process took some time.”
In other correspondence we obtained, Iloh and staff at the publisher Sage took six months to agree on and publish the wording of a correction notice. Iloh objected to language indicating the original article had problems that were being fixed; staff described the changes she wanted to make to proposed wording as “not transparent enough.”
The article at issue, “Does distance education go the distance for adult learners? Evidence from a qualitative study at an American community college,” appeared in the Journal of Adult and Continuing Education in 2018. The emails we obtained start in January 2019 with Iloh apparently sending an updated version of the article attached to an email with no body text.
In another email to the journal’s editor and a Sage employee who managed the journal, dated March 21, Iloh seemingly sent an attachment related to the correction, but the email’s subject is blank and the body text does not specify what she attached.
The managing editor’s reply on March 27 thanked Iloh for “reviewing the draft corrigendum,” but continued:
However, we have concerns about the changes which you have made, particularly removing the record of references which have been amended/included in the updated version of your article.
The editor explained Sage’s policies “in line with best practices of transparency when making changes to a published version of record.”
The early version of the corrigendum stated:
The author regrets that at the time of submission the following sources were not adequately referenced
Iloh responded:
I hope this email finds you well. Per my previous email, this is not accurate however. Those references were not left out, they were added because of new text. I also do not approve of any language that includes “the author regrets.” I can send a new version as again I do not approve of the current and would never allow such. I will submit shortly.
After waiting for Iloh to send her updated version, the Sage editor sent a new revision with “only the information that it is essential to inform the readers of the changes to the version of record.” Iloh did not approve of it, either, and sent her proposed version on May 8.
By that time, the previous managing editor had left Sage, and a new staffer had taken on the role. The editor responded on May 15:
We have accommodated your changes as best we can, however the latest changes you have suggested are not transparent enough to meet the criteria set out in the COPE guidelines. We have the agreement of the Editor of the Journal of Adult and Continuing Education on the corrigendum wording, and will therefore be proceeding with the publication of the corrigendum text as attached with this email. I would like to thank you for your co-operation on this matter and hope you appreciate that SAGE and the Editor of the journal are responsible for ensuring transparency and that relevant procedures are adhered to, and therefore have full discretion regarding the content of the corrigendum wording.
Iloh sent another version the same day, writing:
As you can see, those references were added in updating the text but they were not missing in the one from before so I want accuracy as well.
The editors accepted Iloh’s revision.
After extensive emails in the proofing stage of production as Iloh questioned whether one reference was written correctly and asked to remove two references to her prior work (the article Taylor & Francis was in the process of retracting and another that would be removed), the correction was published in July 2019. It stated that “sections throughout the original manuscript have been re-written and updated and this manuscript also includes new references.”
We asked SAGE about the journal’s decision to publish Iloh’s correction to the article, which added eight references. A spokesperson said:
Those at Sage who were involved with the decision to publish a correction notice for the article are no longer at the company. Our current research integrity team is looking into what, if any, action we should take on the article now.
Iloh’s article “Not non-traditional, the new normal: adult learners and the role of student affairs in supporting older college students” appeared in the 2018 edition of the Journal of Student Affairs. The entire issue had been removed when we wrote our August 2020 post, without any notice. The emails we obtained shed light on what happened.
In March 2019, Iloh emailed Colorado State University’s Student Affairs in Higher Education program, which publishes the Journal of Student Affairs, with an updated version of her article. According to the researcher, the new text had “minor errors corrected” and two additional references. She wrote:
I did not know there wasn’t a copy editing stage, after receiving a revise and resubmit and then an acceptance. I wanted to make sure I took time to carefully correct any errors following my return from family tragedies.
In the next email in the records, sent in December 2019, a CSU professor informed Iloh that the school’s leadership had decided to remove her article from the 2018 issue of the journal after a “plagiarism check” indicated “significant cause for concern.” The professor attached the TurnItIn report, which revealed
direct use of others’ words, including whole sentences, without proper attribution. The most significant of which include the improper use of work by Chen (2017), Ke (2010), and Panacci (2015), as well as of your own work and a Concordia University website.
“I regret this situation keeps dogging you,” wrote the professor, who also mentioned talking with Iloh at an education conference.
Because Iloh had tried to make changes to the article after publication, the professor offered Iloh the opportunity to submit a revision “with the plagiarism issues noted in the reports corrected.” If Iloh submitted a new manuscript, the professor wrote, “we will scan it again and assuming all issues have been corrected, we will republish the article online with an errata note that it was originally published in 2018 and revised due to errors in attribution.”
If Iloh did not resubmit, the professor wrote:
JSA must then note in the journal archives that your article was pulled from the issue due to significant errors in attribution.
I regret that we must take this course of action, but the integrity of the journal and these students’ work as editors must be upheld.
Iloh submitted an updated version of the article the same day.
In March of 2020, the professor conveyed the journal’s decision that the new version didn’t sufficiently address the plagiarism issues, and the journal would not replace the article.
“Although the percentages of individual similar content is very small, I still find issues with inappropriate use of secondary sources appearing as primary sources,” the professor wrote. “Consequently, it is thought that the core issues found with the original manuscript, although reduced, are still evident due to not appropriately attributing secondary sources.”
Iloh replied later that day:
No worries, it is fine just being left it out. Thanks for your correspondence and I hope you are taking good care. I am not even sure what version I sent when I received your first email (as I was dealing with family deaths but wanted to respond given the nature), but these issues will never arise again. I apologize for any inconvenience.
We pointed out to the Journal of Student Affairs’ current leadership that at the time we were reporting this article, a PDF of the journal issue in which Iloh’s article appeared included the text as it originally appeared, with no notice. The professor now in charge of the journal thanked us for pointing out “an error in our website” and said the journal would take the issue down “until an original file can be located to edit and reupload.”
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