A paper was submitted to a journal. While the paper was being processed, the authors contacted the journal and advised that a predatory journal had published the same paper without their permission (the authors apparently submitted it in error, then withdrew it, but the journal proceeded with publishing). The authors are currently pursuing a legal case against the predatory journal to have the article taken down, but have asked the editor to proceed with their journal’s usual review processes.
The journal would not normally consider or publish a paper already published elsewhere but have not encountered this situation where a predatory journal has published something against an author's will (and presumably without any quality control, peer review, etc). It is possible that the predatory journal may never take down the article, blocking the work from publication in a legitimate journal.
Questions for COPE Council
- Should the paper be rejected from the journal, or put on hold until the issue is resolved with the predatory journal?
- How should the journal proceed if the predatory journal refuses/ignores the authors' request to take down the paper?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
The situation is unfortunate but not uncommon, and must be considered as a life experience for the authors. Whether or not it was an error, the authors submitted their paper to the predatory journal, which was published, has a DOI, is searchable/findable/citable by meta-analyses and other reviews. Hence the journal should not consider or publish the paper while a formally published version exists elsewhere, whether or not the authors agreed to it and whether or not the publisher is disreputable. The authors need to withdraw the current submission. Publishing the same dataset twice is bad for the academic record and has the effect of increasing the apparent benefit/efficacy of whatever is being studied (eg, in medicine, publishing the same patients' data twice means they may be inadvertently counted twice in meta-analyses, and so treatment effect sizes are going to be incorrect, which could cause real harm).
The editor may wish to suggest that the authors speak to the library and/or legal team at their institution, who may be able to help in having the illegitimate version of the paper removed. If the authors did not transfer copyright or approve the proofs, then this puts them in a stronger position. However, if copyright has been transferred or a publishing agreement signed and the status of manuscript acceptance has been acknowledged, legal proceedings would have to take their course first. A threat to sue sent by the institution's lawyer can be productive, as this puts the predatory publisher in a potentially costly position that they may be keen to avoid. Predators often simply remove an article with no notice.
If the predatory journal refuses or ignores the authors' request to take down the paper, there is nothing the journal can do. Unfortunately, this is an issue between the authors and the "predatory" journal, and it is likely that it may never be resolved.
For future submissions, the editor might wish to highlight to the authors the Think.Check.Submit. initiative, which provides tools to help researchers identify trusted journals for their research.