#STS: Plagiarism Concerns in Reusing Co-Authored Texts

I was a postdoc on a grant, but it was part of a larger project by the CIs (not PI). I did ethnographic research at three sites, selected by the CIs. Several years later, they published a book, and took large sections of an article we had co-authored (I was the lead author) to use in one of their chapters. They did not ask me for permission to do this, and even sent me a copy of the book. Even though time had passed and I was now much more senior, I still didn't feel able to confront them about what I felt was plagiarism. I wrote to the National Research Integrity office, who advised me that it wasn't clearly plagiarism as they as co-authors were entitled to re-use the text, but I should address it directly with them. They advised that if I didn't get a reply I was satisfied with, to contact the publishers. The CIs clearly didn't think it was a problem to use my words and analysis and make it seem in their book as though they had done the field research and analysis. I didn't do anything.

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