The down side of predatory publishing is that the lack of quality control of almost any kind (except the ensuring that your VISA/Mastercard/Paypal payment clears) is the relative ease of folks plagiarizing your work – be it published or be it in working paper form.
It takes very little for someone to download your research, change the names of the authors and send a payment off to a predatory publishers and there it is, your work of 100’s of hours now under someone elses name. Further, the bad thing about search engines, they just document they do not investigate. Hence, before long someone could be citing your work under someone else’s name. Indeed, if your work is in working paper form, the claim may be that you are the plagiarizer!!!!
Two rules:
- Do not ignore signs that your research is being plagairzed.
- Do not take action until you have got solid advise as to how to proceed. The fastest way to make mistakes is to think you can handle this on your own!
Tomorrow some approaches.
Musings on Accounting Research by Steve 