Journal A accepted a manuscript with six authors in June 2017, which was published in January 2018. Several months later, the editors of journal A found that journal B had published paper B, which shared striking similarities to paper A. Journal B accepted paper B in November 2017 and published it in February 2018. The first author of paper B was different but the remaining four authors were from paper A.
The editorial board of journal A concurred that papers A and B were written (i) in an identical manner or format of presentation; (ii) under the same study design with only minor changes that would make little clinical difference; and (iii) with extensive use of recycled texts which covered most of the papers, including the majority of the materials and discussion sections.
Had the editors of journal A known that the authors had submitted or planned to submit paper B to another journal, they would have rejected paper A. The claim now is that the authors have self-plagiarised the manuscripts, with potential salami publication.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• When self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing is found in a published article, what can the editor do?
• Should the editor inform the other journal editor?
• In such cases, should the article be retracted from both journals?
The editor may wish to consult some of the COPE resources: for example, the flowcharts on what to do if you suspect reductant publication (https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts), Text recycling guidelines for editors (https://publicationethics.org/files/Web_A29298_COPE_Text_Recycling.pdf) and Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct (https://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_guidelines_web_version_0.pdf).
Articles should be retracted to correct the literature not to punish the authors. The Forum advised that it is up to journal B to retract the paper for redundant publication or salami publishing because journal A published the article first. Hence it is journal B’s responsibility here to address the misconduct. The editor should contact journal B and inform them of the issue.
Is it possible that the authors were inexperienced and did not think their paper was going to be accepted by journal A because of the time between acceptance and publication? The authors may then have slightly altered the paper and submitted it to journal B? The advice from the Forum was to give the authors the benefit of the doubt, and to contact the authors for an explanation. It is always best to first ask the authors to explain how this has happened. It may be that this is an educational opportunity.
The Forum advised that salami publishing is difficult to prove, and is a judgement call on the part of the editor. In this case, it is a judgement that journal B needs to make.
The editor followed the COPE flowchart on what to do if you suspect reductant publication, asking the authors for an explanation. After receiving an explanation, the editorial board made a final decision and informed the authors of their decision.
The editorial board found that redundant publication, or salami slicing, was not applicable in this case. Regarding text recycling, however, the board found that this case did meet its definition, based on the excessive volume of verbatim sentences shared between the two articles. In the light of this development, a note was added on the front page of the article to this effect. The editor also notified journal B of their decision.
The editor considers the case closed.
Comments
What if a journal editor insist to retract a paper because he doesn't feel confident in the data . However raw data coincide with the published results but the data overlap with previous publication of the same author
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