[Coral-List] India plagiarism and publishing in predatory journals about corals

Tue Sep 4 06:13:22 UTC 2018

The world of fake journals and non-conferences
Hundreds of researchers from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford were published in
fake academic journals

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3ky45y/hundreds-of-researchers-from-harvard-yale-and-stanford-were-published-in-fake-academic-journals

(India is not alone by a long shot, although it publishes the most fake
journal articles of any country, the US is second in publishing in fake
journals.  The problem is widespread, but just because some others are
doing it as well doesn't mean it is ethical or should be allowed.)
India targets universities in predatory-journal crackdown

But academics say government incentives to publish are part of the problem.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06048-2?utm_source=briefing-dy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=briefing&utm_content=20180829

Inside India's fake research paper shops: pay, publish, profit

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/inside-indias-fake-research-paper-shops-pay-publish-profit-5265402/

Fake science: 1 journal to 1500 in 10 years, Hyderabad is hub of pay and
publish.

https://indianexpress.com/article/india/1-journal-to-1500-in-10-years-hyderabad-is-hub-of-pay-publish-fake-research-paper-5266839/

The instances I posted before are not the first time this group in the
Zoological Survey of India has been caught plagiarizing:

  Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science Year: 2011 | Volume: 6 | Issue:
6 | Page No.: 642-648 DOI: 10.3923/jfas.2011.642.648
     Retracted: Molecular Taxonomy of *Plectropomus maculates* (Serranidae)
by DNA Barcode (COI) from Andaman Sea V. Madhan Chakkaravarthy, C.
Raghunathan, K. Venkataraman and M. Gabriel Paulraj Abstract:
     A CASE OF PLAGIARISM (Case No. 09222011) Professor P.M. Mohan, from
Pondicherry University, India pointed out a plagiarism in a paper published
in Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science Volume 6, 642-648, 2011. On the
receipt of the letter from P.M. Mohan, the case forwarded to the Ethics
Committee of the Science Alert. As per the report of the Ethics Committee,
article entitled "Molecular Taxonomy of *Plectropomus maculates*
(Serranidae) by DNA Barcode (COI) from Andaman Sea." authored by V. Madhan
Chakkaravarthy, C. Raghunathan, K. Venkataraman and M. Gabriel Paulraj,
published in Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Science, 6: 642-648. (DOI:
10.3923/jfas.2011.642.648) contains substantial sections of text that have
been taken verbatim from earlier publication without clear and unambiguous
attribution. Science Alert considers misappropriation of intellectual
property and duplication of text from other authors or publications without
clear and unambiguous attribution totally unacceptable. Plagiarism is a
violation of copyright and a serious breach of scientific ethics. The
Editors and Publisher have agreed to officially retract this article.
Science Alert is highly thankful to Prof. P.M. Mohan, Head, Department of
Ocean Studies and Marine Biology, Pondicherry University, Brookshabad
Campus, Post Bag No.26, Junglighat, Port Blair - 744103, Andaman and
Nicobar Islands, India for pointing out this plagiarism. Detail of article
from which text has been copied by V. Madhan Chakkaravarthy, C.
Raghunathan, K. Venkataraman and M. Gabriel Paulraj: Mohan, P.M., V.
Sachithanandam, P. Dhivya, R. Baskaran, N. Muruganandam, I. K. Chaaitinya
and P. Vijayachari, 2010. Molecular Taxonomy of Serranidae (*Plectropomus
maculates*) using DNA Barcode (Cytochrome C. Oxidase-I) from Andaman Coast,
Port Blair, India. First National Conference on Biotechnology,
Bioinformatics and Bioengineering. December 2010, pp: 92

Right.  So it is said that plagiarism is also copyright violation.

 I found another article in which they report two Caribbean corals in the
Andaman Is of India:
Mondal, T., Raghunathan, C.  2016.   New records of five species of
scleractinian corals to Indian waters from Andaman and Nicobar Islands.
Global Journal of Science Frontier Research: C.  Biological Sciences 16(1):
They report *Mycetophyllia lamarckiana* and *Isophyllia sinuosa* in India,
which are both Caribbean coral species which are not in the Indian Ocean.
 (note the journal name: fake, predatory journals often have "global"
"open" "world" and/or "advanced" in their titles and sometimes combine
topics that have no relationship to each other.).  They also show a picture
of "*Acropora willisae*" which is obviously *Acropora granulosa*.  They
also report "*Porites cumulates* Nemenzo, 1955" which presumably is a
misspelling of *Porites cumulatus* Nemenzo, 1955.  In the paper it is
spelled "*cumulates*" twice, and not spelled correctly once.  That's not a
typo, they don't know how to spell the species correctly.  This paper was
either not peer-reviewed or the reviewers were incompetent.

In another paper,  Mondal, T., Raghunathan, C. , Venkataraman, K.  2015
Report of newly recorded eight scleractinian corals of Middle and South
Andaman Archipelago, India.  Global Journal of Science Frontier Research:
C.  Biological Sciences
The authors report finding *Mussismilia braziliensis* in India, a species
only known from Brazil in the south Atlantic Ocean, and their photo of
"*Lobophyllia
flabelliformis*" is clearly *L. hataii*.

It is exciting to find that in the next paper they report *Acropora
cervicornis* and *Favia fragum* from India, species which up until now were
only known from the Caribbean:
  Mondal, T., Raghunathan, C. , Venkataraman, K.  1983.  Report on eleven
newly recorded scleractinian corals to Indian waters from Andaman and
Nicobar Islands.  Middle-East Journal of Scientific Research 23:
1980-1989.

Another paper reports both an Indo-Pacific species: *Montastrea annuligera*
AND a Caribbean species: *Montastrea annularis* AND another Caribbean
species, *Montastrea cavernosa*.  These sorts of things get through when
there is no peer review or peer review is a sham.
Mondal, T., Raghunathan, C. , Venkataraman, K.  2014. Continental shelf of
North, Middle, and South Button Island National Parks of Andaman and
Nicobar Islands: a wide platform for reef building corals in India. World
Journal of Zoology 9: 281-290.

Then *Acropora cervicornis*, a Caribbean coral, was reported in:
Mondal, T., Raghunathan, C. , Venkataraman, K.  2014.  Threatened
scleractinian corals of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. World Journal
of Zoology 9: 93-100

Do any of these authors sound familiar by now?

Raghunathan is said to have 350 publications, Mondal, a relatively young
author, 100.  Is that possible without using predatory journals?  I doubt
it, personally.

I see that on the ZSI website that they have posted a policy on
plagiarism.  It is at:
https://zsi.gov.in/WriteReadData/userfiles/file/Policy%20Documents/Anti-Plagiarism%20Policy%20%202018%20of%20ZSI.pdf

Good.  The policy is dated 2018.  How many years did they let plagiarism go
on before doing this?  Surely knew it was going on, as the notice above
about a committee finding that one of the group's papers in 2011 was
plagiarized.

(note: they have not renewed their security certificate for the website, it
appears)

On the ZSI website (https://zsi.gov.in/App/implinks.aspx?nr=n), I see no
policy on the use of fake, predatory journals.  I see no announcement of
which books or papers in their own journals have been withdrawn because
they were plagiarized or which papers of their employees in other journals
have been withdrawn, I see nothing that says which people in ZSI have been
found to have plagiarized, nor what their punishment has been.  I see
reports of two committees, but no report of the anti-plagiarism committee.

I see no evidence that ZSI is not rewarding those who use fake journals to
rack up huge numbers of publications, from receiving grants, salaries, and
promotions based on those.  If ZSI rewards them for the number of articles,
no matter whether the journal is fake or not, I bet they will continue
publishing in those journals.  Will that uphold the high ethical standards
that the policy document on plagiarism says ZSI has???  Those articles are
actually more of a problem for science than plagiarized publications, since
they are often full of things that aren't reliable and aren't true or made
up data.  The article "Predatory journals and Indian Ichthyology" points
out the many problems with such papers:
http://indiabiodiversity.org/biodiv/content/projects/project-3bf78586-59b5-495e-ab46-f6a3563ab456/921.pdf

Cheers, Doug
-- 
Douglas Fenner
Consultant (and part time contractor for NOAA)
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

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