Blog Archives
Article in Korean Circulation Journal retracted for plagiarism
In March of this year, Larry Husten reported on CardioBrief that a review article in the Korean Circulation Journal by Chang Gyu Park and Ju Young Lee appeared to plagiarize from a review article in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology by Franz Messerli and Gurusher Panjrath. In April, Husten reported that the article was being investigated by the publishing committee of the Korean Society of Cardiology and Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors. It has just come to my attention that the KCJ article has been retracted. Here is the notice:
On July 31, 2011, Korean Circulation Journal (KCJ) published a review article by Park et al. regarding the J-curve in hypertension and coronary artery diseases. However, a possibility of plagiarism has been raised in this article.
The Editorial Board of KCJ has examined the review article and has requested the Committee for Publication Ethics of Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) to provide an adequate conclusion. After thorough investigation, the Committee for Publication Ethics of KAMJE and the Editorial Board of KCJ have concluded that the article is seriously plagiarizing from an article by Messeri (sic) et al.
In this regard, on May 8, 2012, the Executive Committee of the Korean Society of Cardiology has finally decided to retract the article completely. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.
CardioBrief: “A Case of Plagiarism Raises Blood Pressures”
As discussed by Larry Husten on CardioBrief, a 2011 review article in Korean Circulation Journal appears to plagiarize from a 2009 article that was published in Journal of the American College of Cardiology. I spent several hours comparing the two articles, and found that several paragraphs in the KCJ article consisted primarily of paraphrasing, without attribution, of text from the JACC article. In addition, the majority of references in the KCJ article and two of the figures are the same as in the JACC article, and several of the headings are the same or very similar. The KCJ article does not cite the JACC article at all.
The JACC article is by Franz Messerli and Gurusher Panjrath. The KCJ article is by Chang Gyu Park and Ju Young Lee.
Moreover, Figure 4 in the KCJ article appears to have been copied from figure 1 in the 2009 revised European Guidelines on Hypertension Management, although the figure instead references a 2006 study by Messerli and colleagues that was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
See Larry’s post on CardioBrief for more details.
Update: Larry reports that the editor of KCJ contacted him to say that the article is now being investigated by the publishing committee of the Korean Society of Cardiology and that an additional investigation has been requested from the Ethics Commission of the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors.
Marilyn Mann's Blog 