The chair of the physiology department at the University of Toronto’s medical school committed “self-plagiarism” in a 2005 research report, an offence that amounts to a “severe abuse of the scientific publishing system,” according to the journal that published the article.

Professor Stephen Matthews faces the accusation after the journal Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews retracted his research paper on Oct. 11. The publication cited four previous articles by Matthews from which sections were deemed to have been plagiarized.

Both Matthews and the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine declined to comment.

“The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process,” read a statement posted online by the journal. “Reuse of any material should be appropriately cited and quoted.”

The article in question looked into the effects of “synthetic glucocorticoid” on pregnant women, who use the steroid when at risk of premature delivery.

Journal editor Verity Brown said in an email a reader alerted her that the article’s abstract “was an almost verbatim copy of an abstract of another paper by the same author.

“How can the same few hundred words summarize two different articles?”

Brown, a professor at St. Andrews university in Scotland, then ran Matthews’ research paper through a plagiarism detection program called iThenticate, and found that other passages in the article had been “duplicated” in papers written by Matthews.

“This is a copyright issue. It is also an intellectual infringement,” said Brown.

Matthews is a well-funded Canadian researcher, having received at least a dozen government grants totalling more than $18 million since 2000, according to his university profile.

Susan Zimmerman, executive director of the Secretariat on Responsible Conduct of Research, which oversees the behaviour of academics who receive funding from federal agencies, confirmed that Matthews has been awarded research grants.

Although declining to comment on this specific case, Zimmerman said it is up to universities to investigate the conduct of their researchers when a question of plagiarism comes up. “When our money is involved, they will report back to us and then we will take further recourse if that is required,” said Zimmerman.

The University of Toronto medical school wouldn’t say Wednesday whether it will investigate the matter.