A paper was published in an Italian language journal, together with an English abstract. A second paper was submitted to a UK journal, one of whose referees spotted the similar content.
Closer inspection indicates that both papers contain identical data and had an almost identical abstract and conclusions. The second paper does not reference, acknowledge, or cite the previous Italian publication. The covering letter to the journal confirms that the submitted material had not been published before.
The editors considered that parallel publication is quite common and acceptable when the purpose is to disseminate data from a foreign language only paper more widely, but wondered whether the authors should have been more forthcoming or accurate in their citations and covering letter.
- This is a clear cut case of duplicate publication.
- The editors should write to the authors and their institution.