A Plagiarism Paperdemic - Plagiarism in infection journals in the era of COVID-19

Abstract BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has caused drastic changes in the publishing framework in order to quickly review and publish vital information during this public health emergency. The quality of the academic work being published may have been compromised. One area of concern is plagiarism, where the work of others is directly copied and represented as one’s own. The purpose of this study is to determine the presence of plagiarism in infection journals in papers relating to the COVID-19 pandemic. MethodsConsecutively occurring original research or reviews relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, published in infection journals as ranked by SCOPUS Journal finder were collected. Each manuscript was optimized and uploaded to the Turnitin program. Similarity reports were then manually checked for true plagiarism within the text, where any sentence with more than 80% copying was deemed plagiarised. ResultsA total of 310 papers were analyzed in this cross-sectional study. Papers from a total of 23 journals among 4 quartiles were examined. Of the papers we examined, 41.6% were deemed plagiarised (n=129). Among the plagiarised papers, the average number of copied sentences was 5.42±9.18. The highest recorded similarity report was 60%, and the highest number of copied sentences was 85. Plagiarism was higher in papers published in the year 2020. The most problematic area in the manuscripts was the discussion section. Self plagiarism was identified in 31 papers. Average time to judge all manuscripts was 2.45±3.09. Among all the plagiarized papers 72% belonged to papers where the similarity report was ≤15% (n=93). Papers published from core anglosphere speaking countries were not associated with higher rates of plagiarism. No significant differences were found with regards to plagiarism events among the quartiles. ConclusionPlagiarism is prevalent in COVID19 related publications in infection journals among various quartiles. It is not enough to rely only on similarity reports. Such reports must be accompanied by manual curation of the results with an appropriate threshold to be able to appropriately determine if plagiarism is occurring. The majority of plagiarism is occurring in reports of less than 15% similarity, and this is a blind spot. Incorporating a manual judge could save future time in avoiding retractions and improving the quality of papers in these journals.“A poor original is better than a good imitation.”— Ella Wheeler Wilcox