self plagiarism - Counting a translation as a separate publication

I have read this question. My interest is not in the h-index, but in a colleague listing a paper in two different versions and expecting credit (and teaching release) for both. (They got both versions published in peer-reviewed journals, but one is a straight translation of the other --- I checked.) True, it takes time to do a translation, but the intellectual effort that goes into translating one's own paper is rather less than producing the original research. I think the colleague is behaving selfishly and in an intellectually dishonest way. Before I make a big deal out of it, however, I want to make sure I talk to the right person(s). Is this behavior as big a deal as I think it is?

Answer

Regardless of what one might call this behavior -- self-plagiarism, double-dipping, etc. -- your colleague's behavior is an example of gaming the system. It is a common behavior observed by dishonest and insecure academics in response to various metrics that are introduced to measure their productivity and performance. Some examples related to the one under discussion are:

1. 
   

   Listing a paper legitimately published in two versions (one as a conference proceedings and one in a journal) as two separate listings in one's publication list and without pointing out the connection. See this recent question.

   
   


2. 
   

   Splitting a paper into several smaller papers to artifically inflate one's number of publications while possibly decreasing the work's overall scientific usefulness and impact.

   
   
   


3. 
   

   Strategically "saving up" work done in one merit review cycle to write it up in the next cycle due to a feeling that one has done "enough" work for the current cycle and feeling insecure about one's ability to continue to generate meaningful output in the future.

   
   


4. 
   

   Choosing the journal one is submitting to based on Impact Factor, h-index or other arbitrary and mostly meaningless indices.

   
   

Not all of these practices are equally unethical or dishonest, but they share the common feature that the practitioner is letting their actions be influenced by factors that are tangential to, and in some cases opposed to, the academic's main goal of advancing scientific knowledge. They can also have the effect of distorting institutional decisions about who is performing good work, who deserves to be promoted or offered jobs, etc., and to the extent that that is the case, in my opinion they cross a clear boundary between ethical and unethical behavior.

In the case under discussion, based on your description there is no doubt in my mind that your colleague is behaving dishonestly. It is fine for him to publish his paper in two languages if he feels that that adds some value, but he must clearly indicate that the two publications are duplicate versions of the same work and not try to claim credit for both.