几天前，一位教授来信（电子邮件）告诉我，他们的一篇科研论文被认为是“抄袭”。我的客户中，有一半是我从来没有见过面的。这些都是同事，朋友，客户，同事的同事介绍来的，我一般“来者不拒”。这位教授我见过，印象很深，也帮他们改过好几篇文章。我答应看一下杂志编辑的拒稿信，和审稿人的意见。

（因为我的中文打字太慢，下面改用英文。）

After having read the letter and reviews, I felt terribly sorry for these authors. Yes, what they did could be considered "plagiarizing," but it was more likely that these authors did not know better (about how to write a paper, including giving other papers credits when credits are due).

I think we can all leaern something from this incident.

1) If the first author is a student, he/she should highlight the paragraphs that are "similar" to those in other publicaions. This way, other coauthors can help, or I can, in this case (yes, I edited this manuscript).

2) The professor/co-author should know his/her student's ability of writing papers in English. More importantly, he/she should be familiar with the rules of writing, to avoid being accused of "plagiarizing" other people's work.

There is nothing wrong with repeating an experiment that has been published, including using the same model domain and the same model set up. However, the authors should mention these similarities. As long as there are new results to report, it does not hurt to say the model experiment is identical to the one in some publication EXCEPT for these additions. Even without any additions, you may still discover something the other authors overlooked. However, you have to give credits to others' work, especially those you cite in the manuscript.