Doubts over university scrutiny of academics
Baptist University has been urged to set up an independent investigation into allegations of 'self-plagiarism' involving three articles by academics from its school of Chinese medicine.
The call came after a scientific journal in the Netherlands recently wrote to one of the articles' authors seeking clarification about whether all three papers in fact described the same experiment.
At the centre of the controversy are three articles published in three journals in 2005 on research about a new Chinese-medicine formula for treating rheumatoid arthritis.
The editor-in-chief of the Netherlands' Journal of Ethnopharmacology, Rob Verpoorte, told the South China Morning Post he hoped to get an adequate response soon.
In his letter to one of the authors, Professor Verpoorte said: 'In this case, clearly the same results have been published in a different context. That is where the word 'self-plagiarism' comes in. This is, in my feeling, against the ethics of publishing.'