Comment on Is the Editor of the Springer Journal Scientometrics indifferent to plagiarism? by leo

I read this piece called “the seven sins in academic behavior in the natural sciences”, authored by Wilfred F. van Gunsteren at ETH Zurich. He also brought up a similar argument. One of his points states: “technical descriptions of a procedure with slightly varying parameter values that is used in research over and over will not be changed from one paper to the next or from PhD thesis to PhD thesis, because there is no academic value in modifying a description already highly optimized with respect to clarity. Such copying of test does not violate the basic rules of academia and doesn’t constitute plagiarism”. The author also stated that “true plagiarism is, however, the theft of ideas followed by improper referencing”. So it all comes down to referencing.