India's top scientist and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's advisor C.N.R. Rao had to apologise to a leading scientific journal for reproducing text of other scientists in his research paper.
"The corresponding authors sincerely apologise to the readers, reviewers, and editors for this oversight and for any miscommunication," Rao and his co-author SB Krupanidhi said in an apology to Advanced Materials, a peer-reviewed journal covering materials science.
The July issue of the journal had carried a research paper titled Infrared Photodetectors Based on Reduced Graphene Oxide and Graphene Nanoribbons authored by Rao, Krupanidhi, Basant Chitara and L S Panchakarla.
The scientists belong to Indian Institute of Science and the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research.
The authors admitted that some part of the research paper was reproduced from an article that had appeared in Applied Physics Letters written by S Ghosh, B K Sarker, A Chunder, Lei Zhai and S I Khondaker.
"The corresponding authors regret the reproduction of text from an article that appeared in Applied Physics Letters in their paper," Rao and Krupanidhi said.
The apology was published in the online edition on November 29 last year and was carried in the December 1, 2011 print edition of the weekly.
Rao was unavailable for comment as he was out of the country.
Krupanidhi said the 2010 paper published in Applied Physics Letter was referenced in the original manuscript since beginning and indicated that Rao's team did not have any intention of usurping another team's findings.
Rao had offered to withdraw the paper to avoid any confusion but the editorial committee of Advanced Materials journal subjected it to the scrutiny by a technical panel.
The journal pointed out that couple of lines of text exactly matched with that of a previous publication. Rao and Krupanidhi had contacted the main author of the paper in Applied Physics Letters to explain the situation and express our regret. Advanced Materials journal also responded saying that 'since the repetition of couple of lines of text occurred only in the introduction part and the paper contained original technical contribution', it had accepted the paper.