=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2543/rpaper24
|storemode=property
|title=Dissernet and Self-plagiarism
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2543/rpaper24.pdf
|volume=Vol-2543
|authors=Tatiana Polilova,Alexey Ermakov
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ssi/PolilovaE19
}}
==Dissernet and Self-plagiarism==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2543/rpaper24.pdf
Dissernet and Self-plagiarism
Tatiana Polilova1[0000-0003-4628-3205] and Alexey Ermakov2[0000-0002-6054-0813]
1,2 Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics of Russian Academy of Sciences, Miusskaya sq.
4, 125047, Moscow, Russia
polilova@keldysh.ru
Abstract. Often authors re-use their previously published works when they
prepare a new article, for example, at the next stage of the project. The authors
do not see any violations in this, because they care about the completeness of
the description of the conditions, methods, and results of the study. However,
some Codes of ethics are very negative about the re-use of the text.
The experts of the website Dissernet negatively assess the use of fragments of
texts from previously written articles by the author. Re-publication of the article
also was recognized by Dissernet as unethical act. Limit these ethical standards
of Dissernet the author's right?
According to the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, the creation of deriva-
tive works is one of the ways to realize the exclusive right of the author to the
work. The way of creating a derivative work is entirely within the competence
and responsibility of the author.
In the Civil Code of the Russian Federation the mechanism of simple (non-
exclusive) licenses is fixed: any publisher can receive from the rightholder the
simple license for publication of article, including without its processing. Publi-
cation of the article in several editions is one of the ways of realization of the
right of the author to wide publication of the work. The ethical sphere can only
include the obligation of the author to inform the publisher about the held or
planned publication of the article in another edition.
Keywords: Ethic of Scientific Publications, Exclusive Rights, Derivative
Work, Re-publication.
1 How Often Authors Re-use the Articles
Examples can be given where authors rely on their previously published works when
preparing an article. The most obvious example is the preparation of articles at the
next stage of the project. Since the reporting articles at different stages are linked by a
common theme, the texts of the articles inevitably have intersections associated with
the description of the context of the project (see Ошибка! Источник ссылки не
найден.). The authors do not see any violations in this, because they care primarily
about the completeness of the description of the conditions, methods, and results of
the study [1].
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors.
Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
286
Authors also often resort to re-publishing the article, especially when the article
was originally published in an edition with a limited audience. Re-publication occurs,
in particular, when the article is translated into another language.
Fig. 1. Preparation of the articles at different stages of the project.
Some Codes of publication ethics give an unconditional negative assessment of the
facts of repeated use of fragments of texts from previously written articles by the
author. The re-publication of the article is also negatively assessed. Do such strict
ethical assessments correspond to the current practice of preparing and publishing
scientific articles?
It should be state that today the Russian scientific community is under pressure to
increase the number of published articles. Will the requirements to increase publica-
tion rates lead to the appearance of mass re-publications and duplication of materials
previously written articles in new articles?
The answer to this question exists, and it is encouraging: the deformation of ethical
principles in the scientific community has not happened. As a recent analysis of pub-
lished Russian papers shows, most scholars are not drawn into the dubious competi-
tion of mechanistic reprints. Evidence can be found in the presentation of
Yu. V. Chekhovich [2] – Executive Director of Antiplagiat company.
The company Antiplagiat investigated more than 4.3 million Russia journal arti-
cles, the full texts of which are available in the scientific library eLibrary.ru [2, slides
8–11]. Antiplagiat program selected articles in which the program found matches with
previously written articles in volume of more than 80%. There were 145,168 such
articles. It is easy to calculate that the number of articles with large volumes of repeti-
tive text is only about 3.2% of the total number of 4.3 million articles studied.
Based on the data given in [2], we want to show how often the authors re-use the
article.
287
The whole array of the articles in which repetitions of texts from previously pub-
lished articles were found was divided into clusters. Each cluster included the original
(earliest) article and its repeating copies. A total of 70671 clusters were discovered.
Now let's pay attention to which clusters dominate. It turned out that the number of
clusters consisting of two articles is about 95.5%. The number of clusters consisting
of three articles is about 3.8%, of four articles – 0.5%, of five articles — 0.08% and
then there are very small values. But there were also "Champions of self-citation",
noticeably out of line: found one cluster containing 16 articles and two clusters con-
taining 17 articles. Thus, the authors 16 and, respectively, 17 times published almost
identical article in different journals.
What are the conclusions from the conducted Antiplagiat company research [2]?
First of all, it becomes apparent that most scholars do not resort to re-publishing or
reusing large amounts of text from previously written articles. Among the repeated
publications, the overwhelming majority are the publications of the article in the sec-
ond journal. This fact is probably due to the existing tradition and quite reasonable,
generally accepted in the scientific community considerations.
2 Reasons for Re-publication
It has been shown above that the large part of re-publications is in two editions. Here
are specific examples when the re-publication of the article is justified.
In Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics Russian Academy of Science traditional-
ly produces preprints. Since 2014, this operational serial edition has received ISSN,
equating the status of preprints to the status of the journal (as a more usual type of
scientific publication for an official) [3]. When placing the metadata of the edition in
the eLibrary.ru the preprint gets the attribute "journal article", and in this case the
scientific publication "Keldysh Institute Preprints " could well be included in the array
of journal articles investigated by the Antiplagiat program.
It is known that many authors further publish their preprints in academic journals
in order, firstly, to obtain additional evaluation by an external reviewer, and, second-
ly, to expand the readership. Authors, who initially publish an article in an Institute
(University) Edition with a limited audience, do the same. Re-publication of an article
in another journal is a natural way to convey the results of one's research to a wide
readership.
Re-publication may occur as a result of the usual communication failure between
the author and the editor. A typical scenario is this: the author sends the article to the
journal, perhaps begins a correspondence with the editors, but then the communica-
tion is interrupted for reasons unknown to the author. After waiting two or three
months and not receiving any information from the editorial Board about the fate of
his article, the author sends the article to the second journal, while he cannot tell the
editorial Board anything intelligible about the prospect of publication in the first jour-
nal. The article is successfully published in the next issue of the second journal. A
year later, the article appears in the first journal, but the author has nothing to do but
to expect criticism from the guardians of ethical standards for re-publication.
288
Here is another example. The author, who published the article in the journal,
found a way to strengthen his results, clarify the conclusions, expand the scope of the
results, etc. The re-publication of the article (extended article) is also a natural phe-
nomenon, encouraged by the scientific community. Most likely, the author will
change the title of the article to emphasize the new additions. The author can refer to
the previous version of the article, for example, when applying for publication in a
new journal. But it is hardly reasonable to demand from the author additional expla-
nations or notes in the text of the article.
Even if such explanations appear in the article, the Antiplagiat program is unlikely
to be able to recognize such a remark, since the form of the explanation in the text of
the article is not canonized. If the article gets to the processing of the Antiplagiat pro-
gram, the author risks falling into the cage of violators of ethical norms. And to justify
the actions of the author would require a special procedure. The provision of certifi-
cates, as an attribute of bureaucracy, does not go well with the digitalization of public
relations.
In our opinion, duplication of textual information in articles is a consequence of
underdevelopment of forms of representation of scientific knowledge. But, unfortu-
nately, there are no promises from the authorities of Russian science that would con-
tribute to the development of the infrastructure of scientific knowledge. The focus on
formal indicators of publication activity, expressed in the counting of published jour-
nal articles, does not contribute to the introduction of new forms of publications. A
typical example: the reporting does not take into account scientific Internet resources,
constantly developed by the authors. Such resources include, in particular, the “alive
publications” [4].
The author of the alive publication posted on the Internet undertakes not only to
constantly improve his work, but also to follow the events in the studied area and
systematically reflect everything new in his online text.
The alive publication can be linked to a traditional journal article. At some point,
the author can fix the time-slice of the alive publication, publish an article in the jour-
nal, and then continue to develop his work. Of course, all changes made by the author
to the alive publication must be recorded. Having accumulated new, quite interesting
facts and results, the author can re-publish another time-slice of his continuously de-
veloping work. Thus, the original work may give rise to a family of derivative works
intended for publication in journals. The meaning of the appearance of such journal
publications is clear: the author wants to get an assessment of the work from the re-
viewers of respected journals.
The Institute reports and reports for higher authorities do not take into account the
alive publications, although they are very interesting to readers who want to get the
latest, "fresh" information. It is journal articles that count by higher authorities, de-
spite the fact that journal articles quickly become obsolete.
A new model of author-publisher relations will help to avoid duplication of arti-
cles. The paper [5] presents an open platform for the organization of peer review by
the publisher of the Open Access journal of preprints of articles previously placed in
the popular Open Archive arXiv.org. The author submits to the journal his article
directly from arXiv.org. The journal reviews the article by its experts. Then the arti-
289
cle, which has been successfully reviewed and corrected on the basis of the received
comments, is published again in arXiv.org. The journal assigns a DOI to the article
and publishes only a link to such an article.
A similar relationship can arise between an author and several journals. If an article
published in an open archive receives positive reviews from different journals, and
only references to such work are published in the issues of journals, then there is no
duplication of the text of the article in the journals. The author can be deservedly
proud of the fact that his article received from several journals a kind of quality mark
[6].
Back to the results of the research, that made the company Antiplagiat. The data on
repeated publications in the work [2] are devoid of any ethnic coloring. Although to
somebody it may seem a huge number of articles in which repetitions are found.
However, it is worth noting that these articles have not yet been worked by experts. In
[7, p. 50], written with the participation of employees of the company Antiplagiat,
you can read the following statement about the role of the expert in the analysis of the
results obtained by the program Antiplagiat:
“Conclusions about the integrity and correctness of self-citation in the audited
document should be made by an expert ... And it is up to the expert to decide whether
each borrowed piece of text is a legitimate borrowing. Shifting responsibility in deci-
sion-making from the individual to the system Antiplagiat, for example, by referring
to a particular level of borrowed text identified by the system, is an unethical prac-
tice.”
It is likely that with a "manual" analysis, experts will not see ethical flaws in the re-
publication of articles discovered by the program Antiplagiat. Most likely, this will
happen in the most representative cluster, which contains articles published in two
journals. Thus, the volume of "ethically incorrect" publications should be sharply
reduced.
3 Dissernet Shapes the Editorial Policy of Scientific Journals
A few years ago, in Russia was launched an initiative project of a group of citizens —
Dissernet [8]. The aim of the project was to identify the authors of dissertations, ille-
gally using results of other scientists, illegally copying the texts of publications from
other papers. Gradually, the Russian scientific journals were involved in scope of the
project Dissernet. Dissernet began to apply the methods of text analysis to scientific
articles published in journals. It was announced that scientific journals are now under
the magnifying glass of the Dissernet [9]: the project website maintains a catalog of
journals that, according to Dissernet, have signs of incorrect editorial policy.
Dissernet has published a list of signs of violations of publication ethics [10]. This list
contains items where Dissernet formulates the attitude to citing "no according the
rules". Dissernet introduces a special term – journal "carrying case": it is considered
that the author, instead of the article, published a set of fragments of other articles, if
the program Antiplagiat found of borrowing from other articles of the author, not
decorated "by the rules". The journal directory on the website Dissernet demonstrates
290
the number of journal "carrying cases" discovered (see Ошибка! Источник ссыл-
ки не найден.2).
What is the citation "by the rules"? Dissernet refers to the special rules of the
Higher Attestation Commission (HAC) design borrowing. However, there is no de-
scription of the "citation rules" in the normative documents of the HAC. The regula-
tion of the HAC on the procedure for awarding academic degrees [11] in paragraph
14 indicates only the obligation of the scientist to indicate the author and (or) the
source of the cited materials. Therefore, Dissernet experts may mistakenly recognize
the repetition of material as an ethical violation. And further there is an occasion un-
reasonable to accuse the journal of carrying out incorrect editorial policy.
Fig. 2. The directory of journals on the website of Dissernet.
Dissernet demonstrates a very negative attitude towards the so-called "self-
plagiarism". Dissernet finds a violation of copyright in this case. It is hardly possible
to agree with such a position.
When an author uses other people's materials without reference to sources, he vio-
lates the copyright of the creators of the works. There is a classic case of plagiarism.
But how should one treat a publication in which the author makes extensive use of his
previous work? Whose copyright does the author infringe? A clear answer to this
question could not be found. However, with complete certainty we can to say that the
author has the right to create derivative works and widely publish the results of his
work. We see no reason to restrict the author in this right.
We are sure that the term "self-plagiarism" does not make sense.
291
Let us quote another excerpt from the document published on the website Dissernet
[10, paragraph 3]:
"Despite the fact that self-replications of texts published in the forms of preprints,
conference abstracts, abstracts and dissertations, as well as borrowing from an arti-
cle into a subsequent monograph or from an article/monograph into a dissertation
are not considered as a violation, however, authors are strongly recommended to
report where and when the text or a significant part of it was firstly published"
The given excerpt shows that Dissernet does not consider as violation "self-
replication" of the text in article from the preprints published earlier, abstracts of con-
ferences, and also borrowing of texts of articles in author's abstracts, dissertations,
monographs. The question arises: what are the reasons that do not allow Dissernet to
consider as ethical correct the situation when fragments previously written journal
articles are included into a new article? This situation Dissernet refers to ethically
incorrect "self-plagiarism" without giving any reasonable arguments.
Dissernet again strongly recommends authors to report where and when the text or
its fragments were published for the first time. In our opinion, the reader is not always
interested in the chronology of the publication of the article. He is likely to be inter-
ested in the last version of the article, where the author has published the latest mate-
rials, possibly supplemented by new facts.
It should be remembered that there is a generally accepted mechanism for specify-
ing the literature used in the form of a list of bibliographic references. This mecha-
nism is mastered and successfully used by the authors in almost every article. Howev-
er, the list of bibliographies for various reasons does not always reflect the chronolo-
gy of publication of articles. If another chronological device is required, the scientific
community needs to explain the purpose and advantages of such a device.
4 About the Impartiality of Dissernet
In conclusion, we turn to the declaration published on the website of Dissernet, ex-
plaining the status of the ongoing catalog of journals, which, according to Dissernet,
may show signs of incorrect editorial policy [9]:
“We emphasize that our catalog does not give an ethical assessment or scientific
characteristic of the journal, but only provides questionnaire information about it,
which in the future can be used by bibliometric experts and the scientific community
as a whole”
On the one hand, Dissernet tries to take the position of an outsider who does not in-
terfere in the relations between the participants of the publishing process. Dissernet
not says that unquestionable breaches of publication ethics were discovered: Dissernet
only publishes data that may indicate violations.
On the other hand, the position of Dissernet cannot be called neutral. It is very sim-
ilar to the statement of the authorities of Britain, which has become a political brand –
"highly likely". After this statement authorities of Britain expect excuses of the ac-
cused party.
292
Editorial boards are particularly sensitive to reputational risks. Each editorial office
sees its task in the selection of high-quality scientific articles that are interesting for
the current readership of the journal. The editorial Board does not have the opportuni-
ty and, apparently, the desire to hold discussions with some outside observers armed
with the Antiplagiat program. However, "highly likely"-style pressure can force edi-
tors to deny authors publication, perhaps to the detriment of their readers' interests.
Dissernet's policy is characterized by another quote, which, at first glance, refers to
the particular technical issue of the inexpediency of duplication of publications [10,
paragraph 3]:
“Duplication of publications not only creates unnecessary additional burden on
editors and reviewers of journals, but also distorts bibliometric indicators and results
of meta-analysis …”
Perhaps it is the concern for bibliometric indicators and "meta-analysis" that makes
Dissernet involve a large audience of researchers and editors of scientific journals in
such a fascinating activity — to assess the quality of scientific products in terms of
some formal indicators that give the program for analysis of text arrays such as An-
tiplagiat. In the struggle for the quality of such indicators, Dissernet, in our opinion,
often forgets about the need to respect the rights of authors of scientific works.
5 Civil Code on the Protection of Intellectual Rights
Part IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation is devoted to the protection of
intellectual rights [12]. There, in section VII "Rights to the results of intellectual ac-
tivity and means of individualization", article 1225 defines the types of results of
intellectual activity to which state protection is granted. The result of intellectual ac-
tivity, in particular, is a work of science. One of the types of works of science is a
scientific article written by the author according to the results of scientific research.
The article is created for the purpose of its further publication in a scientific journal.
The relationship between the author and the publisher is governed by the provisions
of the Civil Code.
According to the Civil Code, the author (or employer) has the exclusive right to the
created work. What exactly does the exclusive right to a work include? According to
paragraph 1 of article 1270 of the Civil Code, the copyright holder may use the work
in any form and in any manner not contrary to the law.
Paragraph 2 of article 1270 lists the following ways of using the work:
— reproduction of a work, that is, the production of one or more copies of a
work or part thereof in any material form;
— distributing the work;
— translation or other processing of the work;
etc.
Let's return to the ethical question of reusing the text of the article discussed above.
In terms of the Civil Code, we are talking about the creation of derivative works as a
result of the processing of the original work.
293
Processing is one of the ways of realization of the exclusive right of the author
(right holder) to the work. The Civil Code of the Russian Federation does not regulate
specific permissible methods and volumes of processing of a scientific work. The
author himself decides what he should change in the article in order to convincingly
explain to the reader his ideas and scientific achievements.
The author has no restrictions in creating derivative works based on the original
work. No license agreement or even an agreement on the alienation of the exclusive
right to a work shall deprive the author of the right to create derivative works. Para-
graph 4 of article 1233 of the Civil Code states:
“Conditions of the contract on alienation of the exclusive right or the license
agreement limiting the right of the citizen to create results of intellectual activity of a
certain kind or in a certain area of intellectual activity or to alienate the exclusive
right to such results to other persons, are insignificant”
Thus, with regard to future works, the Civil Code protects the author from con-
tracts that infringe on the interests of the author. In the Russian Federation, the pub-
lisher or other authorities may not require the author not to create derivative works in
the future.
Derivative works may reflect the author's new views on the subject of the research,
clarify the tasks, correct or supplement the previously obtained results, etc. Derivative
works should occupy a legitimate place in the space of scientific publications [13, 14].
Does the author have the right to publish an article in several journals? In our opin-
ion, the current restrictions on the publication and distribution of the article violate the
rights of the author (copyright holder) to publish his work. The publication of a work
in several editions is a legal way to exercise the exclusive right specified in paragraph
11 of article 1270 of the Civil Code:
“11) making the work available to the public in such a way that any person can ac-
cess the work from any place and at any time of his / her choice (making it available
to the public)”
It should be remembered that from the standpoint of the Civil Code, it is also per-
missible to publish the same article in different journals without revision on the terms
of a simple (non-exclusive) license – in this way, the right holder has the opportunity
to expand his readership, to acquaint the scientific community with the results of the
study.
6 Conclusion
The analyze of the fairly representative array of scientific articles conducted by An-
tiplagiat firm shows that no more than 4% of authors resort to re-use of the text of the
article in a new article. The vast majority of these authors make only one re-
publication. This is in keeping with the tradition and reasonable desire of scientists to
convey their results to a wide range of readers. Excessive hype and excessive atten-
tion to re-publications do not correspond to the level of importance of this problem
for the scientific community.
294
The debate in the scientific community on whether it is ethical to publish an article
in several journals is meaningless. The ethical sphere can only relate to the obligation
of the author to inform the publisher about the publication of the article in another
journal.
From the standpoint of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation the publication of
an article in several editions is one of the natural ways enshrined in the law to realize
the author's right to wide publication of the work.
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