In most recent "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
I submitted a short paper built around a distinction that, as far as I know, hasn't been made, at least in the language I used. It recently got rejected, and the referee report was *very* rude -- i.e., the kind of stuff you would never say to someone if it weren't anonymous, even if you thought the paper was really bad. I haven't gotten a rejection that venomous before, so I spent more time than usual obsessing over who might have written it. Given the things they cited and the style they used, I got a hunch it was Philosopher X. Then I looked at Philosopher X's website, and found an abstract for an in-progress paper -- about my distinction, using the language I used to make the distinction, but without citing me. (Not that I would expect to be cited, because I have not publicly posted the draft anywhere.) Using the wayback machine, I found that the abstract was recently uploaded -- there's no trace that this philosopher said anything about this distinction, using that language, before I submitted my paper.
Also, Philosopher X is super high-profile, and I'm an ABD grad student. We've crossed paths at conferences a couple of times and know some of the same people.
Given that, two questions...
-How likely is it that this is just a coincidence? Maybe the kinds of unconscious processes that led me to have my idea and use the language I did to express it also led Philosopher X to do the same -- given that we're talking to some of the same people, reading the same stuff, etc. Plus, there's really no practical pressure for them to take a random grad student's ideas -- their career is set. And, you would naively hope, the fact that they're writing a paper about the same idea would show that they're not the same referee who thinks that the idea is so stupid that they have to be 10/10 rude in their rejection of it.
-No judgment (this is all anonymous anyway!): has anyone ever used an idea from a paper they rejected? I assume this is not a very common practice, which is part of what makes this feel uncommonly galling. But I haven't refereed a lot of papers; maybe others think this is more normal. It is, of course, possible to like an idea in a paper that you think shouldn't be published, maybe it gives you a nearby idea, maybe you think you shouldn't be barred from publishing this nearby idea until the original paper comes out. (After all, if you think the paper is extremely bad, maybe you think it will never come out!) Not to excuse the behavior -- just trying to think of what might lead someone to do this. Anyway, what are the norms here?
Although it's possible it could be coincidence, this certainly looks suspicious to me. As for what the OP should do, if anything (though they didn't ask), I'm not sure. I know other people who have suspected others in the profession of lifting ideas, and I've even had some suspicious things happen to me--but I never did anything, as trying to do anything seemed to me like it would be more of a headache (and potentially career self-sabotaging thing to do) than to simply go on with my career doing the best work I could. Regardless, it does seem to me to be clearly wrong to use an idea from a paper one reviews for a journal.
What do readers think?
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