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I am surprised by the fact that a journal published an article that I have had in arXiv for a few months. The date of publication is after the date that I posted on arXiv. The submission date in the journal is not mentioned. What procedures I should follow?

Some information to clarify the situation:

  • The article published in the journal is a total plagiarism. They changed only the name of the title.

  • The article is published in a journal in the name of other authors.

  • My article (that is in arXiv) is already accepted in another journal (but not yet online) and the date of acceptance is before the date of publication of that of the other authors.

ff524
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user23177
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    Do I understand right that you never submitted the paper to the journal or authorized publication (for example, some Creative Commons licenses would allow publication with no notice or additional permission), and that no coauthor did so either? Did the journal article appear under your name, or was it plagiarized? – Anonymous Mathematician Oct 21 '14 at 23:59
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    the published article has you as a sole author or another guy? is it a clone of your arxiv paper? is it a peer reviewed journal or scam one? Also, I think its good to name the publisher of the journal. – seteropere Oct 22 '14 at 00:00
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    Is the journal you found your arxiv article in a reputable journal, or is it a crap journal? – Tommy Oct 22 '14 at 02:16
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    Did you Google the "authors" of the stolen paper? Are these real people? – Mad Jack Oct 22 '14 at 03:03
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    @seteropere: No, please don’t. See this meta discussion. – Wrzlprmft Oct 22 '14 at 07:18
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    I really wish somebody stole some stuff from the pile on my desk and published it sparing me all the headache of typing, proofreading, etc. Why does it always happen to other people? Sigh! Anyway, if your submission date precedes theirs, then you should have no problem with publishing your own work as planned, and if you bother to look at some journals in certain languages, you'll realize that you should be thankful to the thieves to publishing your paper without introducing a few brilliant mistakes or making it totally incomprehensible. Just inform the editors and forget it. – fedja Oct 23 '14 at 04:53
  • See also http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17145/plagiarism-and-the-arxiv-or-other-preprint-servers – silvado Oct 23 '14 at 07:54
  • The outcome of this issue (whatever it may be) is likely to pose an answer to this question of mine (and be awarded a bounty in the next week). – Wrzlprmft May 14 '15 at 08:03

2 Answers2

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I believe the first thing you need to do is to contact and email the editor in chief of that journal and give him/her a link to your arxiv paper.

He/She a long with the editorial board have to retract the article (hopefully, with a big red X stating that the authors have plagiarised citing your arxiv work).

seteropere
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    This answer assumes that OP is dealing with a journal that would care enough to fix the problem. Suppose that the journal is not reputable and the "authors" don't exist. What should OP do then? – Mad Jack Oct 22 '14 at 03:00
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    @MadJack I do not know. Unless stating otherwise, I would believe the journal editor would deal with this seriously and retract the paper. There is no reason to believe the opposite. – seteropere Oct 22 '14 at 03:06
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    On the plus side, if the journal is disreputable, the plagiarizing authors are unlikely to gain from their misdeeds, since publication in that journal will not increase their academic reputation. – BrenBarn Oct 22 '14 at 04:13
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    @MadJack in that case the OP could contact the publisher of the journal that did accept the paper. Publishers are known to file copyright infringement claims against others who redistribute their articles after publication. If the OP has signed a copyright transfer agreement, perhaps the same process could be invoked even though the article has not actually appeared in print yet. – David Z Oct 22 '14 at 04:54
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    @MadJack: In that case OP should read this question. – Nate Eldredge Oct 22 '14 at 06:09
  • Thanks for your answers, but I want to know if there is an official procedure in relation to the Copyright. I dont know if arxiv ensure a Copyright or no. If there is an authority that can intervene. Should arxiv do it?

    Thanks again.

     – user23177 Oct 26 '14 at 20:56
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Copyright Status

Perhaps you gave away your copyright.

Review your copyright status on arXiv. Copyright status can vary as described here including public domain.

Basil Bourque
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