MV Dougherty reports on a case of a scholar who claimed to interview “judicial system representatives (judges and judicial servants) in Belgrade” and used the interview results as data to make findings about the judiciary in Serbia. However, the interviews were not by the author. What was said by the alleged interviewees was taken from other published work. The article was published by Elsevier in the Communist and Post-Communist Studies, volume 50 (2017) 331-337. Elsevier later retracted the article. In the Retraction Notice, it was said: “The author fabricates interview data in attributing quotes to respondents that previously appeared in published works by other authors and further misrepresents an interview with a single respondent as multiple interviews… One of the conditions for submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare that they have complied with the publisher’s policies concerning ethics in publishing, including a strict prohibition on the fraudulent use of data and plagiarism. As such this article represents a misuse of the scientific publishing system…” For more information, reference can be made to MV Dougherty, “The use of confidentiality and anonymity protections as cover for fraudulent fieldwork data” (2021) 17(4) Research Ethics 480-500.
