Is this plagiarism?

[ChurchStretton]

I am an amateur astronomer. A few years ago I shared some astronomical discoveries I had made with a professional colleague based in the USA. In 2013 I discovered that most of my discoveries had been published – which was the good news – but that they have been published under the name of the professional astronomer I shared them with 3+ years earlier without a single mention of me appearing anywhere in either the article or the standard catalogue in which discoveries of this type are recorded.

I complained to him - "tough" summarised his 2 line reply.
I complained to the head of the US observatory where he worked - I was ignored, neither of my letters received a reply.
I went through the US based "Whistleblowing" process - the result of the "investigation" was never shared with me.

Am I being unreasonable to think that I have been mucked around long enough and it is time to go public?

Have you any proof because this happens all the time to people who don't protect themselves,which is why you should have had him sign a non-disclosure agreement

I think you should seek legal advice from a lawyer specialising in interllectual property and hopefully international law.

The same thing happened to me DH in a different field, where he was invited to Harvard for a while, spied on and a team published his work first. Sadly despite being able to prove IP he hasn't been able to go further and effectively has lost a year of his career. It's a different field though, and he didn't pursue it legally, I hope you have better luck. The swine!

If you have proof from them that they received your database pre-dating their publication & no credit them yes you should be able to get somewhere. Difficult if you're not in academia & taking on some sort of name.

Tame astronomer mentioned here sounds worth talking to - someone respected in academia will be listened to far more than someone unknown.

If that fails, and contacting the journal editor fails maybe try contacting the science editor of a decent newspaper.

Pixie, that's really not how things are done. Asking people to sign a non-disclosure agreement before discussing your research results marks you out as a complete loon and not someone to interact with.

Church, I suspect this isn't strict plagiarism, in that they've not taken your specific expression of your results. Have they taken your interpretation of the data, or added their own interpretations?

It does sound like professional misconduct, data appropriation and possibly data theft. If you're not getting satisfaction from their institution (and it is often like shouting into a void), I would send a professional and factual complaint to the publisher at a pretty senior level.

What result would satisfy you - do you want the paper to be retracted fully, or do you want a corrigendum, that this discovery was yours first. Again, I don't have direct involvement with any astronomy fields, but if there isn't a procedure to make corrections to the record, I will eat my hat. It's not uncommon in the rest of science for two unrelated teams to make the same discovery at the same time.

listen to kerosene. there are procedures in place for this sort of dispute, so if you haven't had a response from the journal editor (which was the right place to start), go to the publisher and insist on an investigation. you have your evidence, so detail this clearly and concisely.

Kerosene's suggestions do sound the way to go. Sympathy though - it's hard to get heard. Do you have a sort of timeline document - with the supporting evidence that you informed your colleague. If not I would put together that first.

OK, trying to parallel your situation in my own field (medical genetics), I guess this would be like reading a paper claiming to be the first to discover a gene/disease link, some years after I had published the same link. And knowing that I'd corresponded with the authors about my research prior to their publication.

In that case, in the first instance, I'd try to put aside any anger/resentment to the authors and deal solely with the journal. It's not uncommon to see corrigendums/new statements of authorship/etc, some time after the initial publication, so you need to persist here. Write polite but firm letters to both UK and US editors (if they have separate ones) and directly to the publisher. Cite your data first - places/dates of publication/acceptance of data by any peer-review system in place. Then cite any references you can find to your data in the subsequent archives/literature - this will show that others were able to reasonably access your data. Then attach copies of any emails that demonstrate these specific authors were aware of your data before publication. Request that they publish a correction.

If you can get the journal on side, you have a much stronger case to then go to the authors and negotiate a correction to their publication for an authorship (if you want that). In fact, the journal may do this job for you (I imagine a correction to an existing paper is easier than a separate article admitting a mistake). For the authors, the alternative at this point is having the journal do it without them, and that looks bad.

Once you have the journal behind you, you also have the perfect ammunition to have any discoveries renamed (is this desirable to you? I assume so....) to reflect your input. I would say that if they offer joint naming (say, the ChurchStretton-DirtyThievingBastard comet), then take it.

If all this fails, I would approach the host institute of the authors with more direct accusations re: scientific misconduct.

It certainly sounds like serious academic misconduct but may turn out to be a complicated and time-consuming (possibly also expensive) case to take on, especially if initial approaches to his place of work and the editor have been ignored.

I think you need a specialist lawyer to take this up for you and go after the journal (for a correction/retraction) and the professional body to which he belongs (for disciplinary procedures).

I have emailed the journal editor with a brief summary of the situation. I will let readers here know how I get on.

Asking people to sign a non-disclosure agreement before discussing your research results marks you out as a complete loon and not someone to interact with.

...and not asking them to sign one marks you out as an idiot!

Very good advice already given but are you a member of The Society of Authors? They would certainly give advice. It does reek of plagiarism and the aggressive response from the party concerned does rather betray that they knew what they were doing. Please let us know what happens and I am sorry that this happened.

pixiepotter are you an academic researcher / scholarly author? it really would be quite unusual in the field i am involved with, though i admit i don't know about astronomy. i imagine there is less collaboration in pharma other big industry-related fields.

The closest I've had to non-disclosure contracts are gentleman's agreements that nothing leaves the room....I am an academic researcher so perhaps we are lax in this front...

As far as I know, there's not actually any money riding on this, is there? Unless my perception of astronomy is well off the mark.

So there's not much point in going down the lawyer route, that way madness (and bankruptcy) lies....

Unless you really want a comet named after you?

I think you are missing the point somewhat. A lot of prestige often lies in academic research and reputations are made. Ultimately yes, it can mean something for a career and it matters. I think so, anyway. You can get advice in the first instance without getting a solicitor.

maidofstars i don't think it's laxness so much as in the spirit of scholarly communication and collaboration

it's in that spirit that it is expected (and right) that work is correctly attributed

i think seeing a lawyer at this stage is too soon - seeing what happens with the journal editor and publisher is the next step. once you have their support you can take this further with the researcher/institution etc, though it may be that you feel that a corrigendum and/or authorship attribution is sufficient, because as punkatheart says that in itself would have an impact on their reputation

Are there any bloggers you can contact about it? In my field there are a number of active bloggers who expose data manipulation etc. Someone with a web presence might be willing to take it up and publicise what has happened.

I'm still puzzling out exactly what this guy has done. You put observations online. You didn't write anything or try to get them published yourself. Why did you share them with this guy - was it a two way exchange or did you just send them to him in an email?

Has he literally just taken them and reproduced verbatim or has he analysed, extended, created and tested theories narrowed the focus, extrapolated etc etc and produced a robust piece of stand alone work.

Why has it taken you 3 years to notice?

I'd be very interested to read exactly what his reply to you said.

Maybe i'm being unfair but you do need to look clearly at this. Can you categorically look at his work and see the exact data in your work? Not just "I think there's something weird going on in this large area" written up as "we have found x and y in this precise location."

Do you know how to find the publisher of the journal. If you don't PM the title and i'll look it up for you.

PicaK - The results were published on-line and also shared within a discussion group and also sent to these professional astronomers.
The exact location in the sky given for my discoveries (over 100 of them) is duplicated in their article.
As I said yesterday I have emailed the journal editor.
Regarding the 3 year "delay" - as far as I was concerned my results were out there. As soon as I found that my results had appeared elsewhere (2013) I took action and it has been rumbling along ever since!

Regarding his US university, contact the Dean of the university or someone senior in the administrative system, not the HoD who might not want a fuss being made on his or her patch. US universities have powerful administrators who will not want to see their institution's reputation threatened and they have substantial management power over and above the department (unlike some UK universities).

Yes I know you've emailed the editor but you'd be wise to contact the Publisher.

They are not the same thing.
At all. (Well apart from the fictional one in Alexander McCall Smith's books.)

PM me the name of the journal and i'll look it up for you if you want.

But you also need to decide what end result you are looking for.

Hmm. Tough on. Had wine If it has previously been published, then yes, it's plagiarism.
If it was an idea, and so therefore previously unpublished, it isn't so clear cut.
You can't copyright/trademark ideas. Not a leg to stand on if in that area.

Some progress. The US astronomers do accept that they knew of my results and that their identical results were published 3 years after mine. But they don't seem to want to do anything about it. The publisher is involved and is supposed to be getting back in touch with me in the next few days.