By Kim Bo-eun
The Astrophysical Journal will retract a paper co-authored by Song Yoo-geun, 17, of the University of Science & Technology, and Park Seok-jae, a researcher at the Korea Astronomy & Space Science Institute over plagiarism concerns.
The paper, "Axisymmetric, Nonstationary Black Hole Magnetospheres: Revisited," was published on Oct. 10.
The journal issued a statement on the American Astronomical Society's website early Wednesday (local time).
"Song & Park (2015) draw extensively from an earlier publication by Dr. Park," the statement said, referring to a 2002 publication by Park. "The overlap between the 2002 book chapter and 2015 paper is exceptionally large."
The 2015 paper failed to include a citation to the 2002 publication, the statement said.
"In view of these findings, the reviewers have recommended that the Editor-in-Chief issue a retraction of Song & Park (2015) and that the retraction notice includes a restatement of the relevant section of the ethics guidelines for the AAS journals," it said, together with the section on plagiarism and publication.
“Plagiarism represents a serious ethical breach, and may constitute legal breach of copyright if the reproduced material has been previously published. This includes repeating text from previously published papers by the author or authors ("self-plagiarism"),” part of the section read.
Yonhap quoted Park as saying he had not been concerned nor had he predicted this would happen and that he would speak of his stance on the issue at a press conference.