Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On checking the dates, Journal B confirmed that submission to their journal occurred one month after the withdrawal confirmation from Journal A, meaning that the authors had not committed duplicate submission. In addition, Journal B rechecked the original iThenticate report that was generated when the authors submitted; the iThenticate report showed no previous publication of the article.
Journal B contacted Journal A to clarify this matter. Journal A confirmed that the authors had submitted the article, which has gone through multiple rounds of peer review and been accepted by Journal A. Journal A further stated that after acceptance the authors were sent a PDF proof to check before publication. At this point, the authors requested withdrawal of their article citing the reason that their funder requires specific journal criteria for publication. Journal A corroborated that they had confirmed the withdrawal with the authors. However, Journal A additionally stated that after confirming the withdrawal they continued to publication as they had put time and effort into the article. As far as Journal B is aware, the authors never received a confirmation of publication from Journal A.
Although there must be sympathy with Journal A for the waste of editorial and reviewer resources, as per previous COPE cases it is the authors’ prerogative to withdraw their article at any stage before publication.
Therefore, in this instance Journal B does not consider the authors to have breached publication ethics with duplicate submission. Instead, Journal B considers Journal A to be at fault for publishing the article after confirming the withdrawal to the authors.
Another layer of confusion is that the article published in Journal A is available only as a PDF. The DOI provided on the PDF does not resolve and the article cannot be found in the volume and issue stated, or anywhere on Journal A’s website. Therefore, it is confusing as to whether the article has been officially published by Journal A. Journal A has not provided information to Journal B to clarify this situation and have stated that they will not further correspond with Journal B without COPE intervention.
Questions for the Forum
- Is Journal B justified in considering that the authors have not committed duplicate submission?
- Is Journal B justified in asking Journal A to remove the PDF of the article from the internet and to consider the publication of the article in Journal B as the official publication of the article?
- Are there any comments from the committee on Journal A’s actions towards the authors?
- What are the next steps the committee would advise Journal B to take?
The Forum was reminded that COPE is not an enforcer of policies or guidelines.
There was a common feeling that both Journal B and the authors had acted correctly and that Journal A had likely engaged in unethical practices by continuing to publish the article after agreeing to its withdrawal. Beyond this, it may up to the authors to work with Journal A to facilitate a retraction and acknowledgement of error. The presenter clarified that Journal A is not predatory.
However, two provisos were noted by Forum members. First, that Journal A may be in breach of copyright if they published the article without having had copyright signed over to them by the authors. The second, more pertinent proviso, is the potential ambiguity over the terms ‘published’ and ‘withdrawal’. Some publishers ‘publish’ accepted manuscripts immediately on acceptance and before any typesetting, assignment to an issue or doi assignment. It was noted that in the current case there is no doi associated with the article. In this case prior ‘publication’ may not be the same as a more traditional ‘hard’ publication. The varying definition of ‘acceptance’ in turn renders the concept of ‘withdrawal’ more ambiguous. This ambiguity makes it harder to understand the nature of Journal A’s action and it would be worth clarifying the context before proceeding.
Several next steps were proposed for Journal B, although their actions may be tempered by any discussion with Journal A over the nature of ‘publication’ as noted above. The general feeling of the Forum was that it was very poor practice on the part of Journal A to proceed with publication, especially since this was allegedly simply on the basis of effort already spent. Journal B should establish whether Journal A’s publisher has a research integrity team to whom the situation can be escalated. Alternatively it could be referred to the publisher more generally, and if this is fruitless and if Journal A is a member of COPE subsequently direct it to COPE’s Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee for further inquiry. Finally, Journal B could consider adding an editorial statement to the article noting that the prior publication in Journal A is redundant and it is the version in Journal B which is the true record.
The publisher referred the case to COPE’s Facilitation & Integrity subcommittee as recommended by the Forum. F&I recommended that the publisher ask the authors which publication they wanted to proceed with. The authors chose the journal which presented this case and so the publication in the other journal was retracted.