A manuscript submitted to Journal A was sent out for external review. It detailed a single case, reporting a new surgical technique. One of the external reviewers reported that the author had presented examples of several similar cases at a conference, which had not been referred to in the submitted paper. He requested further details of their results. The editor asked the authors for more information, as requested. The revised paper was sent back to the same reviewer, who then sent the editor a recent abstract from Journal B that showed some similarities to the manuscript submitted to Journal A. The reviewer had not seen a copy of the full paper published in Journal B, so the editor obtained the paper and sent it to the reviewer, who examined the two papers and confirmed that there was significant overlap. The full paper published in Journal B contains the case submitted to Journal A as well as the rest of the cases discussed at the meeting. How should the editors proceed now?
_ The timing of the other cases was odd—if they were available in time to get the paper reviewed and published in another journal, then they would have surely been available for submission in Journal A? The editor said that Journal A had taken some time to review the paper, but agreed that it was insufficient time for the other cases to have been documented and sent for publication. _ Not all the authors may know about the attempt at dual publication. _ The editor should write to the authors requesting an explanation within a specified time frame. _ If no response was forthcoming, the editor could refer the matter to the institution/employer. The editor could also notify Journal B of the investigation.