Plagiarism, Replication of Published Material without Citation and the Policy of the European Management Review

• Author: Bill Lee,Yochanan Altman,Jérôme Méric
• Date: 01 September 2019
• Published date: 01 September 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12369

Plagiarism, Replication of Published Material

without Citation and the Policy of the

European Management Review

BILL LEE,

1

JÉRÔME MÉRIC

2

and YOCHANAN ALTMAN

3

This paper responds to calls foreditorial teams to provideclear guidance onethical issues such as plagiarism.Our

objective is to outlinea policy suitable foran international journal that belongs to an international community, with

members across different cultures, speaking different languages. After considering definitions of plagiarism and

stating ourpreference for addressing issues ofundeclared replication of text withoutcitation, we review theacademic

literature on incidents of such behaviour and extant policies of different bodies addressing such practices. We then

offer a unique insight into incidents and editorial considerations around submissions to the European Management

Review that have replicated text without proper citation. Finally, we employ our definition of replication of text

without citation, lessons from the extant literature and evidence from our observations in this journal to establish a

policy that European Management Review will employ in the future.

Introduction

Plagiarism, although of only recent interest in academic

publishing (Smartand Gaston, 2018), has been gathering

reported momentum in management and cognate

disciplines (Bedeian et al., 2010; Poon and Ainuddin,

2011; Honig and Bedi, 2012; Sonfield, 2014; Thomas

and de Bruin, 2015, p. 78; Karabag and Berggren, 2016;

Ayondele et al., 2018; Horbach and Halffman, 2019).

Hitherto, the evidence is inconsistent, possibly because

of variationsin definitions and the use of differentmethods

of evidence collection. These inconsistencies add to the

need for this journal to respond to the calls to provide

guidelines on how instances that have been defined as

plagiarism may be dealt with (Gotterbarn et al., 2006;

Poon and Ainuddin, 2011; Godercharle et al., 2014, p.

79; Lenz, 2014). While journals in some disciplines have

not found a need for policies (Enders and Hoover, 2004),

others have responded to such calls (Pupovac and Fanelli,

2015; Smart and Gaston,2018). However, the contents of

extant policies may not be suitable for all journals. The

European Management Review (EMR) has a distinctive

set of needs. There are some suggestions that publication

cultures vary both between the different countries that

comprise Europe and between European countries and

the rest of the world (Poon and Ainuddin, 2011; Honig

and Bedi, 2012; Albers, 2014) from which EMR receives

contributions. As the official journal of the European

Academy of Management (EURAM), EMR aims to cater

for authors from all European countries and beyond, at

different stages of an academic career, from PhD student

to senior professor; and to support them all as they seek

to prepare articles worthy of publication.

Our aspirations to facilitate such pluralism takes place

in a specific socio-political context. The EURAM

constituency covers a large number of countries that each

has its own first language, though English has been

establishedas the lingua franca of publication.This places

those who speak English as a second language at a

potential disadvantage (González-Alcaide et al., 2012;

zbilgin, 2014; Gantman et al., 2015; Pascale, 2016). It

may also deny access to knowledge written in other

languages to those not commanding that language; which

may provide some justification for text recycling (cf,

Horbach and Halffman, 2019). Moreover, the

internationalisation and globalisation of business

education, the introduction of research quality audits in

numerouscountries and the proliferationof journal quality

lists, have all helped to engender a ‘publish or perish’

culture where initial appointment and later career

advancement are increasingly determined by the number

of contributions to quality journals that adopt the lingua

franca of English, rather than the indigenous language of

the country in which one is based (Willmott, 1995;

Anderson et al., 2007; Bedeian et al., 2010; Cederström

and Hoedemaekers, 2012; Honig and Bedi, 2012; Lund,

2012; Van Dalen and Henkens, 2012; Ylijoki and Ursin,

2013 Ayondele et al., 2018; Fanelli et al., 2015; Lee,

2018). Such a culture can pressurise academics to take

unethical shortcuts.

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12369

©2019 European Academy of Management

European Management Review, Vol. 16, –, (2019)

495 505