It was brought to the attention of Journal A that a paper published in 2002 was similar (title, summary, introduction, case, survey, results, discussion) to a paper published in Journal B. Journal A is a very technical journal that reports conference proceedings and is not peer reviewed. Furthermore, Journal B had received a letter from the authors of another paper, published in a very prestigious journal, which had been criticised in the version of the paper published in Journal B. Journal B has a policy of not publishing letters in their journal, but the letter was sent on to the authors of the paper. When submitting their paper to Journal A, the authors took into account some comments made in the letter forwarded by the editor of Journal B. The authors then made use of these comments in modifying the second paper without acknowledging the authors of the letter. The editor of Journal A often felt that the article published in journal B was a full paper even though the authors disputed this. Journal B’s editor said the authors had been “blacklisted. ”
_ Was the letter from the authors of the paper being criticised analogous to a reviewer’s report? Reviewers comment on papers and authors then rewrite the paper addressing any concerns. _ The editor felt that this was not entirely analogous as the letter was not “friendly” advice and had been written with a view to publication, rebutting the article’s criticism. _ The content of the letter had not been plagiarised. _ The letter authors knew that their comments had been passed on by journal B. _ The editor felt that the authors of the letter would want their concerns published. _ The authors should be asked to respond to the issues raised by the letter authors about duplicate publication and then the editors should publish a notice of retraction. _ If the article in journal B was—as the editor stated—peer reviewed, how could the authors not know about this? _ However, the publication of society abstracts can occasionally lead to inadvertent publication. Peer review can simply mean a panel reviewing the abstracts or posters for proceedings. Some societies record and print everything presented at their meetings. _ The high degree of overlap between the two papers suggested poor practice on the authors’ part. _ The editor should write to the authors’ employers about the issue and inform the authors of this. _ The editor should also publish a notice of duplicate publication in the journal. _ Indefinite “blacklisting” is not a considered action