Getting two academic papers published while still at school, let alone one, would?clearly be?a major achievement for any teenager.?But having one of those articles later retracted by a journal because your senior co-author ¡°forgot¡± to properly acknowledge their similarity is probably not the best way to start a budding scientific career.

That is what has happened to a pupil at one of the US¡¯ most prestigious private schools after a physics paper co-authored with a professor in China was retracted for self-plagiarism.

The article, in the field of optics, was retracted by the Journal of the Optical Society of America B?because of?¡°significant overlap¡± with another paper by the same authors published in a?different journal just days before.

An investigation was launched by The Optical Society (OSA) after a whistleblower highlighted similarities between the articles and also raised questions about such a paper being authored by a high-school pupil.

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The retracted article ¨C which featured research into ¡°Thomson backscattering¡± ¨C was published in JOSA B on 14 June, around two weeks after another article by the same authors on Thomson backscattering appeared online in a physics journal called EPL (Europhysics Letters).

The JOSA B article appeared to be a longer version of the EPL paper, with passages in both featuring very similar ¨C at times identical ¨C wording, but with no acknowledgement of a link between them.

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The JOSA B retraction notice states that the article had been retracted ¡°due to significant overlap with another article by these authors without proper citation¡± in ¡°violation¡± of OSA ethical guidelines. These guidelines state that there should be no ¡°unacceptably close replication of the author¡¯s own previously published text or results, even a few sentences, without proper citation¡±.

The first author¡¯s affiliation is listed as Phillips Academy ¨C an independent school in Andover, near Boston ¨C which has been described as ¡°America¡¯s best high school¡±. Fees can be up to $57,800 (?46,600) a year and pupils often go on to study at Ivy League universities.

According to the original JOSA B article, the first author had conducted ¡°much of the research¡­under the mentorship of the second author¡±, who is listed as Bai-Song Xie, a professor in the College of Nuclear Science and Technology at Beijing Normal University.

He told?Times Higher Education that although the JOSA B article contained ¡°many new research results and contents¡± that were not available in the EPL paper, he ¡°forgot to add the reference¡± to the first paper.

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¡°This is indeed not precise. I will learn the lessons of this matter and be more rigorous in future research work,¡± Professor Xie said.

Professor Xie added that he hoped the retraction would not have a ¡°negative impact¡± on the student, who was ¡°full of enthusiasm for scientific research¡±.

Bart van Tiggelen, editor-in-chief of EPL,?told?THE that because the JOSA B article was submitted and published after the EPL paper it was for the OSA ¡°to investigate any self-plagiarism¡±. He added that after a ¡°thorough investigation¡± the journal was ¡°satisfied that no misconduct has taken place¡± with regard to ¡°the authorship of an apparently very junior author¡±.

The EPL article remains online.

simon.baker@timeshighereducation.com