Author Finds Another's Name on an Elsevier Book Chapter She Wrote
retractionwatch.comThe explanation
“Several chapter authors declined to revise their chapter for the second edition of the book and these chapters were reviewed, and in some cases updated by the volume editor. An error in the production process resulted in the original author names being replaced by the volume editor. This was a production error and not the responsibility of the volume editor and these errors are in the process of being corrected.”
doesn’t look unlikely to me, so to me, This looks like a genuine error, assuming the agreement the authors signed up for allows for such modifications (not unlikely, given that publishers want to keep all options open for themselves and can spread out the costs of good lawyers over many contracts)
What remains, though, is
“Should we scientists now hire legal representation from our own pocket every time we want to publish to make sure our rights will not be trampled on?” she said.”
The answer to that, is “If you sign a legally binding contract, you should read it and search for clarification if you aren’t sure you understand what you’re signing up for”. In practice, that means the answer unfortunately is “yes”.
A friend of mine once said on LinkedIn that he found a paper about his Ph.D. work plagiarised 100%: the clone had another author name on it, but even cited his original Ph.D. thesis!
In contrast, I once found my Ph.D. thesis cited on a Wikipedia page, but with another author's name on it! This was easier to correct, the "edit" button is your friend. But it makes you wonder how many errors are on Wikipedia that have so far gone undetected.
This has been going on for a long time. It's probably actually easier to catch nowadays than it was when journals were only in print.
There are some institutions where the whole hierarchy from prof downward has engaged and build careers on academic theft. Often build upon rejected and denied student/fellow papers, books, etc. You cant even find that sort of theft via archive plagiarism crawling. Someone elses academic work ends in a pschology meltdown and burnout and the work gets cannibalized by the thiefing brood of that institution.
Elsevier doing their best at being the cops of academia.
Elsevier is run by human scum, and always has been as far back as my personal experience goes.