K.S. Jayaraman in Nature India [free subscription required]:
'Super sand', hailed as a low-cost water purification option for developing countries, recently made headlines across the world after researchers reported its merits. The sand, they said, could be made by coating ordinary sand grains with graphite oxide and could remove mercury and dyes from water. Its uniqueness — five times more filtering capacity than that of sand, which is traditionally used for water filtration.
While US and Australian authors have been given credit in the popular and scientific press for the finding, researchers [led by Prof. T. Pradeep] at the nanoscience lab of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chennai claim they were two years ahead of the US-Australia group in figuring this out. They say they missed out on the recognition since their scientific paper got delayed in a series of rejections by journal publishers.
2 Comments:
The phenomenon of "borrowing of ideas" is common in the ever-growing and ever-competitive scientific community. However, a proper acknowledgment or reference to the source of the idea should be considered an ethical practice.
The article points out the importance of a more transparent peer-reviewing system where the fame of a reviewer or an author does not come in the way of the fate of a paper.
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