The president of Aizu University in Japan has resigned after two investigations found he had self-plagiarized or double-submitted a dozen papers.
Most researchers understand that international standards of publication ethics stipulate that a research output must only be submitted to one publisher for publication. Submitting more than once is a significant breach of responsible research conduct. It becomes fraud if a researcher tries to use those publications for activity funding, recruitment, or in grant applications. This story from Japan highlights the serious consequences of being found to have committed this form of misconduct.
The move comes more than a year after the first investigation, as we reported, which concluded in February 2022 and found that Miyazaki had self-plagiarized four papers. At that time, he had to forfeit 20% of one month’s salary.
A month later, according to a report issued last week by the university, Miyazaki “self-reported that there were 12 papers suspected of self-plagiarism.” A preliminary investigation then began, with a full investigation starting in April and lasting until February of this year.
The university’s committee reviewed 54 papers, finding Miyazaki guilty of self-plagiarism in three and double submission in five. The committee defined the former as new papers that failed to cite previous overlapping work by Miyazaki, and the latter as papers that cited the previous work but did not advance it.
