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This Journal Is Pulling Out A Paper On Plagiarism Because It Was Plagiarised. True Story

This Journal Is Pulling A Paper On Plagiarism Because It Was Plagiarised. True Story
Businessman is looking at a huge hand drawn chalkboard in a classroom
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Businessman is looking at a huge hand drawn chalkboard in a classroom

In the most meta move of all time, the Indian Journal of Dermatology is retracting a paper on plagiarism--'Development of a Guideline to Approach Plagiarism in Indian Scenario'--because the author thought it fit to plagiarise parts of it.

We're not kidding -- here's the notice:

"The article 'Development of a guideline to approach plagiarism in Indian scenario' is being retracted as the manuscript has been found to be copied from the first round questionnaire of the dissertation entitled 'Developing a comprehensive guideline for overcoming and preventing plagiarism at the international level based on expert opinion with the Delphi method' by Dr. Mehdi Mokhtari."

Retraction Watch reports that the author of the retracted paper in question has himself been a victim of plagiarism, and urged the scientific community to take a hard line on piracy and copying. Too bad he didn't feel like following his own advice. According to the website, the Indian Journal of Dermatology has been very strict about plagiarism and has banned several authors in the past.

Too bad this isn't an April Fool's joke.

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This article exists as part of the online archive for HuffPost India, which closed in 2020. Some features are no longer enabled. If you have questions or concerns about this article, please contact indiasupport@huffpost.com.