Why Should the Journal of Clinical Microbiology Apologize for Publishing a Paper Plagiarized from Its Archives?

In the March 2011 issue of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology ( Journal ), a retraction was published in which the authors stated the following: “we realized after our article had been published that major parts of the text had been plagiarized almost verbatim from Colombo et al.” ([3][1]).

• The incidence rates were expressed only per 1,000 admissions but not per patient days, as indicated in "Statistical analysis." • Males comprised 58.64% of cases (as stated in Table 1 of the article) and not 64.02%, as stated in the text. • Cancer was documented for 311 cases (31.61%), and 20 of these cancers (2.03%) were hematologic malignancies (  Table 2 is titled "Species distribution and incidence . . . ," with no incidence data in the table. More comments could be made, such as regarding the discussion of data from Italy using a citation from Chile (page 4203, reference 40) (2). But, while we recognize that reviewers did not have the benefit of hindsight we now have, the above inconsistencies were so obvious that the submitters should have been queried about and/or asked to reconcile their inconsistencies, whether their submission was a plagiary or not. If the Journal of Clinical Microbiology can gladly accept apologies from others who plagiarized an article initially published elsewhere (5), then the Journal certainly can extend its own apologies to its contributors and readers for publishing a poorly reviewed plagiary of its own archived article.

Editor in Chief's Reply
In the foregoing comment letter, Nsuami et al. draw attention to a 2010 publication in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology (JCM) in which Cisterna et al. (1) were found to have plagiarized large segments of text from a paper that had been published by Colombo and colleagues 4 years earlier (3).
Regarding this matter, a concern for plagiarism by Cisterna (2). In addition, Cisterna was informed that he would be banned from publishing any material in any ASM journal for 2 years. This sanction was not imposed on the coauthors of the Cisterna et al. paper, as they provided evi-dence that they had not participated in the study or had any involvement in developing the manuscript that was published. The coauthors claimed to have learned of the paper only after it had been submitted for publication. And lastly, a correspondence was sent to Colombo et al. in which I expressed our regret that this unfortunate incident had occurred.
In the foregoing comment letter, Nsuami et al. contend that JCM should apologize to its readers for not having recognized the plagiary of Cisterna et al. prior to publication of their paper and, further, that the peer review process that had been applied to the Cisterna et al. paper had been flawed and inadequate. As Editor in Chief of JCM, I enthusiastically reject both of these assertions.
Approximately 2,500 manuscripts are considered annually for publication by JCM. There simply does not currently exist a cost-effective plagiarism screening process that could be applied proactively to this number of manuscripts that would yield reliable information in a timely manner. For this reason, the ASM and JCM apply the CrossCheck plagiarism screen selectively whenever concerns for plagiarism arise.
The position of the ASM and JCM regarding matters of plagiarism is explicitly articulated in the JCM author instructions (http://jcm.asm.org/misc/journal-ita_edi.dtl#02). Therein, we state clearly and emphatically that plagiarism will not be tolerated and, further, that by virtue of their participation as authors, authors of submitted papers understand and accept this dictate. We believe that this position is consistent with the ethical precepts of current publication practices in the peerreviewed medical scientific literature.
I find the second assertion of Nsuami et al., namely, that peer review of the Cisterna et al. paper was inadequate, at best curious; uniformed and lacking in common sense might be better terms. The Cisterna et al. paper was carefully and thoroughly reviewed by two individuals with primary expertise in the field of the epidemiology of antifungal resistance, the focus of the Cisterna et al. paper. While it is true that this review process failed to identify certain data presentation inconsistencies by Cisterna et al., a fact that we very much regret, overall the reviews were comprehensive and instructive. That the review process did not recognize the plagiary of Cisterna et al., something we also regret, is perhaps understandable insofar as the paper that was plagiarized had been published 4 years previously and none of the reviewers had participated in that investigation. As with most things, the peer review process is simply not perfect, nor will it ever be.
In summary, as is true of all journals published by the ASM, JCM takes the matter of plagiarism very seriously. Further, we strongly believe that the process we have in place for assessing publications for plagiarism, while not infallible, is rigorous, practical, and nearly always works.