UNCOVERING MULTIPLE PUBLICATIONS OF REDUNDANT RESEARCH: A CASE STUDY
Possible multiple publication of studies in four different journals was detected. Close inspection of the articles in question revealed that the author had directly copied and reused extensive sections of text, including tables in all four articles.
Three UK authors submitted a paper 1 to Journal A based on the lead author’s PhD thesis. This paper was accepted by Journal A and a copyright assignment form was signed. This article appeared in Journal A.
Six months after submission of paper 1, the lead author presented a conference paper 2 based on the same PhD research and submitted it to Journal B. This too was accepted and a copyright agreement was signed. This article went on to appear in Journal B six months after submission.
One year after submitting the conference paper 2, the lead author gave another conference paper 3 based on their PhD research which was subsequently published in Journal C.
Subsequently, another paper was published in Journal D, again based on the same PhD research. The date of submitting the paper and signing the copyright form is unknown.
Thus, within 2 years, 4 publications based on the same research were made. In addition, it was discovered that there is significant overlap in the dates the articles were submitted and copyright forms signed. This, coupled with the extent of the similarities between the articles, lead us to believe that the author would have been aware they were submitting near identical articles to multiple journals over a short space of time
COPE advice
The advice from COPE was to consult the flowchart for “redundant publication in a published paper”. The flowchart advises that you check the degree of overlap. If it is substantial, contact the authors. If an unsatisfactory response is received, the editor should consider publishing a notice of redundant publication or retraction. Sometimes the author makes a genuine mistake or the instructions to authors are not clear enough (does your journal say that submitted work should be original and not submitted elsewhere) or the author is very junior. In such cases writing to the author explaining the situation and outlining the expected behaviour is sufficient. However, if the editor is satisfied that this is not a simple error and an unsatisfactory response has been received, he should consider contacting the author’s institution and asking them to investigate. The Forum would also advise contacting the other journals.
