I worked as professor and HOD of pulmonary medicine for just over three years in a private medical college located in the state of Andhrapradesh and left on personal reasons. The post graduate students who studied under me used to lament that dissertations of their seniors in different departments are being published as original articles showing medical faculty as main authors and researchers employed in the medical college are acting as ghost authors. In some cases, the teaching faculty in no way related to the work were being shown as authors.
For example, a faculty holding MD in medical administration and doing administrative work was shown as co-author of work done in emergency medicine. The researchers doing this shameful act of plagiarism have made themselves co-authors and corresponding authors just for converting the dissertations to original articles. All these are being…