Journal A is dealing with two separate cases of double submission:
Case 1: Manuscript X was submitted to the journal. Two rounds of revision were suggested by the editor in charge, following comments by the referee, and an amended version was submitted. Following routine plagiarism detection checking, the editorial team found that a substantial part of the manuscript was similar to article Y published in Journal A the previous year. Furthermore, the team noticed that article Y was extremely close to the original submission to our journal and it was not cited in the latest revision. The journal clearly requires that 'submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else; (…)'. Following COPE’s guidelines, the corresponding author was asked to clarify their position. They responded saying that 'Given the major changes suggested in the referee's report, we considered that considering them would give rise to a new paper, quite different from the first version that had been submitted previously.' Thus the authors felt that, faced with the opportunity of publishing in journal A following a presentation at a conference they did 'not question the legitimacy of that publication, since the version to be submitted to our journal, as the result of the referee's report was significantly different'.
Case 2: Manuscript Z was submitted to our journal. It was very difficult to find referees with the necessary expertise and so it was some time before reports were received. One of the referees detected that it was extremely similar to article W recently published in journal B. The history available in article W showed that this article was submitted to journal B at the same time as to our journal. The response of the corresponding author to our inquiry was to apologise and withdraw the paper.
In both cases the journal believe the authors broke the rules concerning redundant publication and had no intention of communicating the redundancy to the editors in charge. As a consequence, they intend to reject both papers and to advise the authors to voluntarily communicate what has happened to the editors-in-chief of journals A and B. The editors will accept any decision that these editors may make. However, if the authors choose not to follow the advice given, the editors of the present journal reserve the right to do it themselves and also to inform the Deans of the authors’ institutions.
Question for COPE Council
- Is the proposed line of action appropriate?
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.
Both sets of authors are clearly in the wrong here. The course of action might depend on their seniority and therefore the degree to which they ought to have known better. A simple email setting out that this type of conduct is considered unacceptable practice might do if they are junior authors.
If they are more senior authors or if the editor feels that this was blatant behaviour on the part of the authors then it might be additionally necessary to inform the institutions. In that case the authors can plead their respective cases of innocence based on ignorance and will probably receive a warning not to do it again. The only people who can investigate the authors with any authority reside in the institution. The COPE flowchart on redundant (duplicate) publication in a published article would suggest that because the authors' responses are unsatisfactory in case 1 and there was an admission in case 2, the institutions should be informed.
Regarding contacting the other editors, according to COPE guidance on sharing information among editors in chief, 'Information should only be shared if there is no response from the author, the response is inadequate, or more than one journal is thought to be affected'. The responses in both cases could be deemed inadequate, so the other editors could be informed directly. However, the other editors are unlikely to do anything regarding the published papers as the science is presumably correct, but they may treat future submissions from those authors with care. So it is reasonable to contact the other journals and present the information. If the other journals wish to act on the information, that is up to them.
Another suggestion is for the editors of both affected journals to write a joint letter to the author (copying in the institution).
The journal should take some responsibility for helping to set the stage for this type of author misconduct with the apparently very long review times. The journal may need to review, reinforce or clarify their author guidelines. It may be necessary for the editor/journals to reinforce/clarify their policy and author guidelines.
Since the journal has experienced more than one episode of this type of behaviour, perhaps publishing an editorial setting out why this type of behaviour is not acceptable would be in order.