I can attest to this. I myself am victim of this. My undergraduate thesis was plagiarized by two other papers. Code was 80% the same, they just added some trivial things. No citing of my work at all.
Look at my other comment for more explanation - if you are working under less known advisor, or at less known university, there is a high chance that this will happen if your work is good.
This kind of thing is best done after the thesis is in the bag. A student is racing against the clock. Grad study has many kinds of hard failures. At the most extreme, your advisor could up and die. The focus has to be on finishing. That's how you get out.
Matter of fact, I did, even with help of my advisor. The journal did not take any action (it is Q1 open access journal), since they come up with all kinds of mental gymnastics why it is not copied (which boiled down it is NOT 100% the same).
That was for the first occurrence. For the 2nd one, we just did not bother because it hurts my advisor's reputation as well. It is not in the interest of journal to admit the mistake once they made it -- they will fight you about it and try to keep their reputation/image up.
Two times I have published my research code - both times I have found many other papers/projects plagiarized my work without giving me any credit. This happens way more than you would think, especially if you are working under less known advisor, and at less known university.
As the other comment said, if you care about "advancing the science", and won't mind stuff like the above happening, then go for it. In my experience, it is not worth it.
> Two times I have published my research code - both times I have found many other papers/projects plagiarized my work without giving me any credit. This happens way more than you would think, especially if you are working under less known advisor, and at less known university.
> I wonder how often it is the case that code isn't considered an academic product per se, and so free to use.
As an outsider with occasional glimpses into academia, I've observed a bimodal response:
On the one hand, code seems to be seen as more available for reuse in terms of copy-and-paste, particularly in the exploratory phase.
On the other hand, code reuse is somewhat less likely to trigger an acknowledgement and citation.
This unacknowledged copy-and-paste borrowing of code seems in turn to be one influential factor inhibiting the derived code from being shared in turn.
> May have to make it very explicit.
That certainly can't hurt. I've certainly seen that reusable tools aren't cited as often as they are used, which in turn inhibits efforts from being made by academics in the production and refinement of such tools (the citation being the primary currency and reward mechanism for publication in academia).
Explicitly asking for citations (and getting them) helps with that, though the more general issue of "releasing open source software isn't seen as 'publication' for academic status purposes such as being considered for tenure" remains a problem, though it varies considerably by field, institution, and department.
But if given some thought and extra effort, a researcher might actually get more papers (possibly with different sets of collaborators) out of roughly the same body of work, especially if they look more broadly for appropriate conferences and journals.
BTW, again as an outsider with occasional glimpses into academia, it seems to me that there are many vacant niches for cross-disciplinary journals and conferences focused on reusable assets such as datasets and tools necessary for research.
Look at my other comment for more explanation - if you are working under less known advisor, or at less known university, there is a high chance that this will happen if your work is good.