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the errant paper, where it cannot be missed! These are very few instances, but they represent laudable
initiatives.

A recent editorial in the journal Experimental Economics (Cooper, et al., 2017) has highlighted the
start of a contrary, and disturbing, trend. It states, “The policy of Experimental Economics in the
future is that we will not publish errata to correct a failure to cite previous work, except under unusual
circumstances.” It goes on to advise researchers who feel their work or ideas have been plagiarized
with clever word changes, stating that “Those authors who feel that they should have been cited or
that were cited inaccurately in an article that we have published will have to use other means, such
as posting notices on their own websites” (ibid.). This sets a dangerous precedent of putting the
burden of correction totally on the victims, and issues have been raised with well-reputed publishers
Hopefully this unsettling trend will not persist. Researchers must be cautious and ensure ownership of
their ideas.

4. Justice and closure for the victims

The current status of justice for the victims of idea-plagiarism is best discussed through examples.
The victim of idea-plagiarism is up against odds, and unlikely to get even partial, leave alone
complete, closure (Chaddah, 2019). For various reasons ranging around complete knowledge of the
events surrounding each episode, I shall use only examples where I was a victim, and where I filed
complaints that were upheld by experts as evidenced by the fact that reputed journals took visible
corrective actions. There were however, limitations of the corrective actions taken. The limitations
reflect the fact that no active researcher (as most victims are) can invest more than a very limited time
and effort in seeking corrective actions. However, all active researchers can take various precautions to
protect and register their original ideas. It has been stressed (Chaddah, 2018, op. cit.) that the onus of
claiming date-stamped priority rests with the researchers, and it has been suggested that the first step
is to upload their manuscripts on well-established preprint archives when, or even before, these are
submitted to a journal.
Here I briefly list the three episodes where I could obtain partial closures (Chaddah, 2019, op. cit.).

• The first episode was in 1975-1977. My first paper as a Ph.D. student, published on December
16, 1975, introduced the concept of “geometrical broadening” and how higher energy photons
worsened the effective resolution in Compton Profile measurements, overturning conclusions
that prevailed until then (Chaddah and Sahni, 1975). Six months later McIntire (having
affiliations to University of Houston, Texas, and Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois)
submitted a paper where the title talked about “angular-broadening effects” in Compton profile
measurements, with the term angular-broadening occurring about 20 times in the paper
(McIntire, 1976). This paper used the idea we had proposed, drew the same conclusions that
we had drawn, appeared eleven months after our paper, and did not cite us. As a 25-year-old,
I was stunned, protested, and the journal agreed to publish an erratum (McIntire, 1977) that
cited both our journal paper and our conference paper. Many years later, I realized that this
erratum was never cited in any subsequent paper, and my ‘closure’ was incomplete and was only
a psychological ‘sop’ that I gullibly swallowed. We must ensure that if we succeed in getting a
correction, then that correction receives visibility. Towards the end of this Chapter I will propose
a mechanism, preferably under the aegis of UGC, to ensure such visibility.

• In 2001-2005, we observed novel features in our study across the first-order magnetic transition
in doped CeFe .We published our results during 2001 and 2002 in two papers (Manekar, et al.,
2
2001; Singh, 2002), and in 2002 (Manekar, et al. 2002). In these papers we also published our

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