Research Fraud and the Publish or Perish World of Academia

Research fraud, more politely termed questionable research practices, has been receiving increasing attention in the academic literature and in journal editorial circles. The Journal of Marketing Channels (JMC) Editorial Review Board and originality checking software (i.e., CrossCheck) have found several instances of questionable research practices ranging from submitting a paper for publication already published elsewhere (i.e., self-plagiarism) to a paper whose front end had many problems followed by a discussion and conclusions section that was state of the art. CrossCheck flagged the discussions and conclusions section as being verbatim from an unusual source: an article already published by completely different authors (i.e., plagiarism).1 Plagiarism and self-plagiarism are particularly troubling questionable research practices for journal editors as we have a responsibility to strictly adhere to applicable copyright laws of the United States, especially as articles published elsewhere and then republished in whole or in part a second time in a different journal are likely to violate copyright restrictions associated with the prior publication. Editors, reviewers, and authors simply must not knowingly violate the publisher’s guidelines regarding the exclusivity and proprietary nature of other authors’ intellectual contributions. Consequently, every submission and revision at JMC is checked for originality with the CrossCheck software. Although I do not want this editorial to become a “how-to” instruction manual on publishing misconduct, it is important that those of us in the academic community who submit papers to journals, review these submissions, publish them, study them, teach their content to classes, and use their findings in our own work or to influence public policy become fully aware of these issues.