On April 14 I discovered a journal article which, on initial assessment, appears to be a derivative of a section of a paper of mine from 2009. The authors didn’t copy text verbatim from my paper. If only it were so black and white. The critical section of their Their paper reads like a re-write an expanded version of one section of my paper. Something ain’t right. I haven’t determined yet whether it’s appropriate to label their paper “plagiarism” or just “sleazy” but it begs the question, “Plagiarism by citation amnesia?” Talk is cheap though. Go to the primary sources and judge for yourself:
Both links above take you to the abstracts in the respective journals. The articles themselves are behind paywalls. If you don’t have free access to either journal then go to the bottom of this post for links to no-cost copies.
The essence of my complaint: Section 4.1 in their paper describes the details of computing the Cramer-Rao lower bound on the uncertainty associated with the parameter of interest. So does Section 2.F of my paper. See also my Figure 6 in Section 4.A compared with, well, a bunch of their figures. As noted above, their discussion isn’t taken verbatim from my paper. What rubs me the wrong way is that they address the same relatively obscure topic using the same methods but different words – and do so without acknowledging my prior work. Is it possible that the lack of citation was an honest oversight? Doubtful. I know the authors are aware of my paper because a) they list it in the Reference section of their paper and b) one of the authors has have previously made unsubstantiated criticisms of my paper in non-peer-reviewed conference proceedings. I regarded b) as an annoyance. Making unsubstantiated criticisms in an unreviewed publication that few people are likely to read is one thing; creating a derivative of my work without citing it is a different story. I won’t tolerate the latter. The big question is, “Is their paper a derivative work?” Is it plagiarism? Or am I overreacting? I need to re-read their paper as well as mine and re-assess. That stated, I’m also interested in the opinions of neutral parties.
PS: What would our sponsor think?
The same government agency that funded my work also funded them. Set aside for the moment the ethical issue of not acknowledging the role someone else’s prior work played in your creation, as a taxpaper, wouldn’t you be irritated by paying twice for the same work?
PPS: Links to no-cost copies of both papers
If you don’t have access to Applied Optics and/or Optical Engineering then you can download a copy of my paper here and their paper here. (Note: The free version of my paper is not a reprint of the journal article. It’s the final version of the manuscript from which the galleys were created. The content is nearly identical but it’s not formatted in the journal style.)