A publisher co-published an editorial across its portfolio of six journals. Co-publication was clearly flagged in each journal.
Subsequently, there was a discussion on PubPeer on the editorials, with one comment suggesting that co-publication is the same as duplicate publication.
The publisher believes that editorials that do not report on the results of research and which are flagged as co-published are not true duplicate publication.
Question for COPE Council
- Is co-publishing an editorial in six journals considered duplicate publication?
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.
Strictly speaking, this could be viewed as duplicate publication. However, if the issue being discussed in the editorial is common to all of the journals, and each is flagged as being published simultaneously in the others (ideally with citations to those other editorials for functional transparency) and are identical in wording, then this is probably fine. Medical journals often publish intra-discipline or common practice or policy articles that are relevant to multiple audiences in this way. 'Joint' editorials also occur, where the editors of more than one journal sign off on the editorial, usually because they can effectively reach different audiences. The editors clearly indicate that it is the same editorial but since the pieces may have different DOIs they can appear on searches as duplicates when in fact they are clearly a single, joint editorial. Transparent notification of the simultaneous and duplicate publication in each article is key, as well as the texts being identical.
The main problems with duplicate publication (and the attendant harms) are: the risk of misleading an audience; the risk of duplicate counting of the same patient data in subsequent systematic reviews/meta-analyses, with the attendant harm of inappropriate inflation of the apparent benefits of treatment; presenting something as novel (readers have the reasonable expectation of novelty if they are paying for content) when it is not novel; having a journal invest its limited resources in something that is already published (and so has lower yield), which keeps the journal from investing those resources in something it will get more mileage out of; and citation inflation.
Based on the details of co-publication of this editorial, it does not appear to cause these harms.
If the journal follows ICMJE guidelines, then the following may be useful:
'Editors of different journals may together decide to simultaneously or jointly publish an article if they believe that doing so would be in the best interest of public health. However, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) indexes all such simultaneously published joint publications separately, so editors should include a statement making the simultaneous publication clear to readers.'...
'Secondary publication of material published in other journals or online may be justifiable and beneficial, especially when intended to disseminate important information to the widest possible audience (eg, guidelines produced by government agencies and professional organizations in the same or a different language).'