Plagiarism

Corrections of the scholarly record are necessary for maintaining the integrity of the repository of published works. Previous postings have noted retractions issued by publishers for a case of serial plagiarism involving Thomistic studies (here and here).

Retractions for a new, unrelated case of serial plagiarism have recently been issued for articles dealing with late Scholastic economic thought. These articles have appeared under the name Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J. The first retraction for a plagiarized article is found in the latest issue of Journal of Markets and Morality 17.2 (2014): 349–352. Titled “Plagiarism in a Digital Age,” the retraction states:

a number of direct, substantial, and nearly verbatim sections were found that corresponded with places in Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson’s magisterial work, The School of Salamanca [...] without attribution or other normal means of signaling to the reader that the words on the page are not original to the author of record.

The second retraction for a plagiarized book chapter appears on the website of the publisher Brill. The retraction notes that this chapter is:

retracted because of serious citation problems (in some cases the original sources are not mentioned at all). It goes without saying that Brill strongly disapproves of such practices, which represent a serious breach of publication integrity.

This now-retracted chapter, which covers such figures as the Dominicans Francisco de Vitoria and Domingo de Soto, has been frequently cited in discussions of scholastic economic thought. For a third case of plagiarism, the publisher Rowman and Littlefield has suspended sales of the volume containing a chapter that is nearly identical to abovementioned article retracted for plagiarism by Journal of Markets and Morality. (The publisher has not, however, corrected the scholarly record by issuing a statement of retraction for this chapter.) 

The three abovementioned works are: 

  • Francisco Gómez Camacho, “Introduction: Luis de Molina, S. J.: Life, Studies, and Teaching,” Journal of Markets & Morality 8.1 (2005): 167–198.

  • Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J., “Later Scholastics: Spanish Economic Thought in the XVIth and XVIIth Centuries,” in Ancient and Medieval Economic Ideas and Concepts of Social Justice, ed. S. Todd Lowry and Barry Gordon (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 503–561.

  • Francisco Gómez Camacho S. J., “Introduction: Luis de Molina, S.J.: Life, Studies, and Teaching,” in Sourcebook in Late-Scholastic Monetary Theory, ed. Stephen J. Grabill (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books / Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 111–135.

Thomistic Scholarship and Plagiarism, Part 2

Two plagiarized articles on Thomas Aquinas have been retracted in recent weeks: 

  • M.W.F. Stone, “Practical Reason and the Orders of Morals and Nature in Aquinas’s Theory of the Lex Naturae”, in Mind, Metaphysics, and Value in the Thomistic and Analytical Traditions, ed. John Haldane (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), pp. 195-212 
  • M.W.F. Stone, “The Angelic Doctor and the Stagirite: Thomas Aquinas and Contemporary ‘Aristotelian’ Ethics”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 101 (2001), pp. 97-128 

Regarding the first article, University Notre Dame Press has appended a note to the book’s online advertisement that states: 

Parts […] have been subject to claims of plagiarism. The editor and publisher as a result cannot stand behind the noted material as originally contained in this volume.

Regarding the second, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing has published a short article titled “Retraction” in the most recent issue of the journal that states in part: 

The retraction has been agreed due to significant overlap with previously published material. 

Details of the plagiarism for these and additional cases were set forth in “40 Cases of Plagiarism” in Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale 51/2009 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 350-391, compiled by Pernille Harsting, Russell L. Friedman, and me. For an earlier discussion, see here.