I have read carefully the four papers by A. Ioachim et al., which are in my personal area of expertise (experimental studies of dielectric ceramics). They are clearly cases of self-plagiarism, with all four papers very nearly identical (> 90%).

In addition, after the initial publications two additional authors were added [ed. E. Andronescu and S. Jinga]. These two authors must be regarded as having plagiarized the work of the original authors.

These actions violate the ethical norms for scientific work and publication, and in particular the contractual terms of manuscript submission to the journals involved.

Q2. Grey zone. Are there elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

This is not a grey area.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution or country published a similar work? You may think of conceivable procedures, sanctions, impact on individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

The actions that would normally be taken include: (1) The authors would all be banned permanently or temporarily by the editors of each of the four journals; (2) all of the authors would be officially reprimanded by their institutes of employment; (3) the authors who added their names to the subsequent publication would be dismissed.

I believe that the authors have been involved in repeatedly publishing the same results, texts and graphs in archival journals without proper copyright permission.  I believe that this has violated the publication principles of these journals and copyright laws.  Neither of these violations is acceptable practice.

Q2. Grey zone. Are there elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

No.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution or country published a similar work? You may think of conceivable procedures, sanctions, impact on individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

The archival journals have rules against such violations, that include barring the authors from publishing their papers in their copyrighted journals for a period of time. The 3 following papers should be evaluated by the individual journals to see if the self-plagiarism violations warrant the work being rescinded and any other punitive actions. I would also expect the university to review the case and access the damage done. In this case, the initial report was worthy of publication, but did not report highly impactful work with large numbers of citations. If the authors are indeed found to have violated copyright laws or any other journal principles, given that there was limited damage, a strong message should be sent to all the authors that plagiarism or self-plagiarism is not acceptable. In the future, they will be expected to properly acknowledge any copyrighted information and obtain the proper permission, when appropriate.

I expect the senior authors of a manuscript to be ultimately responsible for insuring that the author list includes only the names of co-workers who made a scientific contribution. I would ask that the administrators at the respective universities look into this matter, given that so much of the information in the 3 following papers is repeated, yet the author list of those papers varies and even includes additional authors.

The four papers by Ioachim et al. contain essentially the same data and a high proportion of identical content, both in terms of exact wording of most of the text and repetition of figures. This degree of overlap is unethical and counter both to the spirit and the letter of expectations of journals that every paper submitted should be original and not contain material published elsewhere (except where explicitly stated, as in review articles, for example). The authors must have signed copyright agreements to this effect. To all intents and purposes the scientific content of the papers is essentially identical. Changes in the authorship and titles only provide a superficial cover for what is plagiarism, self-plagiarism and copyright violation.

Q2. Grey zone. Are there elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

There is no grey area with respect to these four papers.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution or country published a similar work? You may think of conceivable procedures, sanctions, impact on individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

Multiple publication of essentially identical results is regarded as wholly unacceptable among national and international peer groups of any branch of science. It brings individuals and their institutions into disrepute. The action of journals would be to ban authors from publishing further work and, perhaps, to pursue the issue of copyright. It is unlikely that authors of plagiarism would be able to gain employment in my university. The additional serious issue is the acknowledgement of different grants for funding the same piece of work. It could result in a refusal by grant giving bodies to provide further funding for any of the authors involved.

Based on the information / documents provided to me, it is clear that the authors have published the same results, texts, pictures, plots and graphs repeatedly without proper citations and without copyright permission. This violates the publication principles.

Q2. Grey zone. Are there elements that are controversial but which cannot be clearly qualified as misconduct?

No, they are clearly identifiable.

Q3. Significance. What would be the outcome and impact if colleagues from your institution or country published a similar work? You may think of conceivable procedures, sanctions, impact on individuals, research, institution, public perception etc.

It is important to figure out whether the plagiarism was done by the graduate students / postdoctoral fellows or by the senior authors. However, if it is the same results / data / the same figures from the same group, the senior authors should have been able to catch / figure that out. It should be reviewed by the journal as well as by the institution. Depending on who did the research misconduct, the journal as well as the university / institution should take appropriate action, based on their guideline. This type of incidents raises serious concerns about the ethical guidance that the community gets from the research institution and they are becoming more and more common in the research community. This should be one’s moral ethical responsibility as a researcher. The concept should be taught at the institution level as well as in research group level.