EDITORIAL DILEMMA: NAVIGATING THE COMPLEX TERRAIN OF DUPLICATE PUBLICATION
In a recent case, a paper discussing a cohort of patients with an unusual respiratory pathogen was accepted and published in Journal A. However, the editor discovered a similar paper in a US journal, Journal B, published a few months earlier. The second paper featured more or less the same patients, with a few additions, and presented additional secondary outcome data, albeit reaching the same conclusions.
COPE Guidance and Editor's Dilemma: The editor of Journal A considered this a case of duplicate publication, though the authors contested the claim, citing the inclusion of additional data. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provided advice, acknowledging the complexity of the issue. COPE suggested that journals should explicitly state their policies on duplicate publication in their instructions to authors or submission guidelines. Some participants in the COPE Forum argued that if the "extra" data cannot stand alone, it is likely considered duplicate publication.
In challenging situations like these, COPE advised leaving the decision to the editor's judgment. Software that calculates the percentage of overlap between two papers could assist editors in determining acceptable levels. However, the consensus was that undetected cases pose a serious problem, potentially leading to the double-counting of data in meta-analyses.
Follow-up Actions: The editor communicated to the authors that the situation was regarded as duplicate publication, leading to the withdrawal of the paper from the website. A notice of duplicate publication was subsequently published in Journal A, addressing the issue transparently.
This case underscores the ongoing challenges in the realm of academic publishing, emphasizing the importance of clear guidelines, ethical considerations, and editorial vigilance to maintain the integrity of scholarly work.
