The article, on cognitive impairment among older adults in India, appeared online on June 15, 2025 as a pre-proof in Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics Plus. At that point, its background section included several long paragraphs that were identical, or near-identical, to text in an extended conference abstract from 2024. Poulami Barman, first author of the conference abstract and a dual-program Ph.D. student in India and Germany, became aware her work had been stolen after one of her supervisors alerted her to the new paper.

On June 23, 2025, Barman, who is also at the University of Rostock, in Germany, contacted the journal, providing a side-by-side comparison of the two works. A journal manager replied that the publisher would look into her complaint. A few days later, Barman noticed that the plagiarized paragraphs had been revised in the paper’s version of record, dated June 30, 2025, without any explanation.

"They let her modify the article, and that was, like, completely unethical," Barman told. "It should be retracted because it was completely plagiarized." Liang-Kung Chen, editor-in-chief of Archives of Gerontology and Geriatrics Plus, told that he had "decided to retract this paper on July 26, so we did have certain actions on this paper. The retraction process is going on at the publisher’s (Elsevier’s) end."

Source https://retractionwatch.com/2025/08/26/journal-let-authors-make-undisclosed-changes-that-masked-stolen-content-in-paper/

Another high-profile case has interested scientists. Read now