A Tale of Plagiarism: Do Publishers Condone Academic Misconduct?

Abstract

The pressure to produce academic papers at all costs caused many scandals in the scientific community including scholars reviewing their own papers as independent peer reviewers. While authors, pressured to keep pace with the growing judgment of success by the number of publications on their resume desperately act contrary to the requirements of intellectual honesty, publishers driven primarily by short term profit publish books and articles with little quality control. Thus, the combination of “publish or perish” culture and money in scientific publication unsurprisingly creates a breeding ground for academic misconducts ranging from subtle intellectual dishonesty to sheer plagiarism. In this short essay, I provide an anecdote of how two scholars misappropriated a part of my work without adequate attribution and refused to resolve my complaint in an amicable manner. I argue that publishers with the view to increasing short-term profit protect intellectually dishonest authors and condone a system of plagiarism when they publish over-priced books and articles with low intellectual quality and little theoretical or practical relevance.