Letters to the Editor
Redundant publication: Expect the unexpected Access this article online Website: www.ijp-online.com
Quick Response Code:
DOI: 10.4103/0253-7613.144950
An incidence of 0.567 was considered significant, and the articles that met this criterion were evaluated for duplication.[7] Duplication was suspected when the article was found to address the same topic as the index article or shared similar methodology results and conclusion. Full-text was obtained for each of the suspected articles and was independently reviewed by the authors. Agreement between the authors was evaluated with kappa statistics. Proportion of each of the categories of duplicate publication is represented in percentage. A total of 83 published articles was downloaded from the website. Search by eTBLAST revealed four articles with the similarity score of >0.56, four other articles from Google search while none from PubMed. The articles from eTBLAST were evaluated for duplication by each of the authors, and none of them were found to be redundant. Of the four articles from Google search, two were duplicate, one each was found to be potentially duplicate and salami-slicing publication. Of the 83 articles, the incidence of duplicate publication in the present study was four (4.8%). There was a complete agreement (kappa = 1) between the authors on all these four articles for the presence of redundancy. All the four articles that were suspected through Google search were confirmed to be of duplicate but none of the four from eTBLAST. Scientific misconduct in publication includes redundant (duplicate and salami-slicing), plagiarized, containing falsified data and authorship improprieties. Fang et al. did a detailed review on over 2000 retracted articles indexed by PubMed which revealed that only 21.3% of
retractions were attributable to error, while the rest (67.4%) of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%).[8] In the same study, it has also been identified that China and India contributed more to number of duplicate publications and plagiarized articles than others. Hence, we evaluated the presence of redundant publications that includes duplicate and salami-slicing publications in an Indian journal. Duplicate publication is not new or rare in biomedical fields. Redundant publication is a form of “Authors misconduct.” Authors indulge in duplicate publication just to increase the magnitude of their scientific publications. Due to a prolonged editorial/peer-reviewing process in many of the journals, authors may consider submitting their work to more than one journal at a time despite journal’s clear mention in their “instructions to authors” that they should not do so. Duplicate publications/simultaneous submissions are considered unethical, because there is defiance in publishing other author’s work, copyright violation, wastage of editorial and peer-reviewing process and may distort the evidence especially in meta-analysis, the highest level of evidence. A nation-wide campaign by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors was conducted in 2006 to sensitize biomedical researchers against such scientific misconduct. Following this, a steady decline in the rate of duplicate publications was observed from an average of 5.9% (2004) to 1.2% (2009) in Korea.[9] In India, such programs are the need of the hour, considering many of the current retractions in Indian biomedical literature due to scientific misconduct. It is the responsibility of the editor of the journal as well as the peer-reviewers to ensure that each of the published articles meets the highest standards of scientific integrity. A recent spoof paper by John Bohannon[10] and our previous study[11] on the peer reviewing process showed only 2/10 Indian journal editors followed the reviewing codes precisely. There are various software like CrossCheck, IThenticate, eTBLAST, dejavu to detect duplicate publications or plagiarism. Many require subscription, but eTBLAST and dejavu are available for free. Editors/peer-reviewers can utilize these tools to identify the presence of any considerable overlapping information in the manuscripts. We used eTBLAST in the present study, but the search is limited to the following databases: MEDLINE, CRISP, NASA, Medical cases, PubMed central, clinical trials, Arxiv, Wikipedia, and VT courses. Of the four redundant publications in the present study, one was duplicated into non-English language, and the other three were published in journals that were not indexed with MEDLINE. Hence, they were not revealed with either eTBLAST or PubMed search. Since Google indexes billions of web pages, there is an additional potential of identifying similar publications in journals that are not indexed with PubMed/MEDLINE, the largest database of biomedical literature. Hence, we recommend editors/peer-reviewers to use a combination of such specific tools besides Google search to identify scientific misconduct. A careful manual analysis of suspected articles Indian Journal of Pharmacology | December 2014 | Vol 46 | Issue 6 663
Letters to the Editor
is necessary because none of these tools are 100% specific. In fact, at the time of peer-review process, the journals may follow a standardized set of comments one of which shall include whether they have checked for the presence of a similar publication using any of the available tools. Having found to indulge in such misconducts, the author’s institution should also be notified regarding the same. We also suggest International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to create a common database containing the details of authors who had attempted this form of scientific misconduct and their publication shall not be accepted by any of the journals in the future. Once an article is found to have considerable overlap with any other published article, editors should retract the article. A notice of retraction should be issued both as a hard copy and electronic version. In conclusion, we found a 4.8% incidence of redundant publications in a pharmacology journal similar to previous reports from various other fields of biomedical literature. Authors have to be made more aware of such misconduct, and the journals have to strengthen their reviewing process to eliminate the same. S. Kannan, S. Gowri1 Departments of Pharmacology, Subharti Medical College and Prosthodontics, 1Subharti Dental college, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India
664 Indian Journal of Pharmacology | December 2014 | Vol 46 | Issue 6
Correspondence to: Dr. Kannan Sridharan, E-mail: [email protected]
References 1.
Durani P. Duplicate publications: Redundancy in plastic surgery literature. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg 2006;59:975-7. 2. Kim SY, Hahm CK, Bae CW, Cho HM. Duplicate publications in Korean medical journals indexed in KoreaMed. J Korean Med Sci 2008;23:131-3. 3. Qi X, Yang M, Ren W, Jia J, Wang J, Han G, et al. Find duplicates among the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library Databases in systematic review. PLoS One 2013;8:e71838. 4. Gwilym SE, Swan MC, Giele H. One in 13 ‘original’ articles in the journal of bone and joint surgery are duplicate or fragmented publications. J Bone Joint Surg Br 2004;86:743-5. 5. Hennessey KK, Williams AR, Afshar K, Macneily AE. Duplicate publications: A sample of redundancy in the journal of urology. Can Urol Assoc J 2012;6:177-80. 6. Schein M, Paladugu R. Redundant surgical publications: Tip of the iceberg? Surgery 2001;129:655-61. 7. Errami M, Wren JD, Hicks JM, Garner HR. eTBLAST: A web server to identify expert reviewers, appropriate journals and similar publications. Nucleic Acids Res 2007;35:W12-5. 8. Fang FC, Steen RG, Casadevall A. Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2012;109:17028-33. 9. Kim SY, Bae CW, Hahm CK, Cho HM. Duplicate publication rate decline in Korean medical journals. J Korean Med Sci 2014;29:172-5. 10. Kannan S, Gowri S. A study with spoof paper – Reflection of reviewing processes in open – Access journals. J Pharmacol Pharmacother 2014;5:70. 11. Kannan S, Deshpande SP, Gogtay NJ, Thatte UM. Policy of reviewing statistics in Indian medical and surgical journals. J Pharmacol Pharmacother 2013;4:139-40.
Copyright of Indian Journal of Pharmacology is the property of Medknow Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
Redundant publication: Expect the unexpected Access this article online Website: www.ijp-online.com
Quick Response Code:
DOI: 10.4103/0253-7613.144950
An incidence of 0.567 was considered significant, and the articles that met this criterion were evaluated for duplication.[7] Duplication was suspected when the article was found to address the same topic as the index article or shared similar methodology results and conclusion. Full-text was obtained for each of the suspected articles and was independently reviewed by the authors. Agreement between the authors was evaluated with kappa statistics. Proportion of each of the categories of duplicate publication is represented in percentage. A total of 83 published articles was downloaded from the website. Search by eTBLAST revealed four articles with the similarity score of >0.56, four other articles from Google search while none from PubMed. The articles from eTBLAST were evaluated for duplication by each of the authors, and none of them were found to be redundant. Of the four articles from Google search, two were duplicate, one each was found to be potentially duplicate and salami-slicing publication. Of the 83 articles, the incidence of duplicate publication in the present study was four (4.8%). There was a complete agreement (kappa = 1) between the authors on all these four articles for the presence of redundancy. All the four articles that were suspected through Google search were confirmed to be of duplicate but none of the four from eTBLAST. Scientific misconduct in publication includes redundant (duplicate and salami-slicing), plagiarized, containing falsified data and authorship improprieties. Fang et al. did a detailed review on over 2000 retracted articles indexed by PubMed which revealed that only 21.3% of
retractions were attributable to error, while the rest (67.4%) of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%).[8] In the same study, it has also been identified that China and India contributed more to number of duplicate publications and plagiarized articles than others. Hence, we evaluated the presence of redundant publications that includes duplicate and salami-slicing publications in an Indian journal. Duplicate publication is not new or rare in biomedical fields. Redundant publication is a form of “Authors misconduct.” Authors indulge in duplicate publication just to increase the magnitude of their scientific publications. Due to a prolonged editorial/peer-reviewing process in many of the journals, authors may consider submitting their work to more than one journal at a time despite journal’s clear mention in their “instructions to authors” that they should not do so. Duplicate publications/simultaneous submissions are considered unethical, because there is defiance in publishing other author’s work, copyright violation, wastage of editorial and peer-reviewing process and may distort the evidence especially in meta-analysis, the highest level of evidence. A nation-wide campaign by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors was conducted in 2006 to sensitize biomedical researchers against such scientific misconduct. Following this, a steady decline in the rate of duplicate publications was observed from an average of 5.9% (2004) to 1.2% (2009) in Korea.[9] In India, such programs are the need of the hour, considering many of the current retractions in Indian biomedical literature due to scientific misconduct. It is the responsibility of the editor of the journal as well as the peer-reviewers to ensure that each of the published articles meets the highest standards of scientific integrity. A recent spoof paper by John Bohannon[10] and our previous study[11] on the peer reviewing process showed only 2/10 Indian journal editors followed the reviewing codes precisely. There are various software like CrossCheck, IThenticate, eTBLAST, dejavu to detect duplicate publications or plagiarism. Many require subscription, but eTBLAST and dejavu are available for free. Editors/peer-reviewers can utilize these tools to identify the presence of any considerable overlapping information in the manuscripts. We used eTBLAST in the present study, but the search is limited to the following databases: MEDLINE, CRISP, NASA, Medical cases, PubMed central, clinical trials, Arxiv, Wikipedia, and VT courses. Of the four redundant publications in the present study, one was duplicated into non-English language, and the other three were published in journals that were not indexed with MEDLINE. Hence, they were not revealed with either eTBLAST or PubMed search. Since Google indexes billions of web pages, there is an additional potential of identifying similar publications in journals that are not indexed with PubMed/MEDLINE, the largest database of biomedical literature. Hence, we recommend editors/peer-reviewers to use a combination of such specific tools besides Google search to identify scientific misconduct. A careful manual analysis of suspected articles Indian Journal of Pharmacology | December 2014 | Vol 46 | Issue 6 663
Letters to the Editor
is necessary because none of these tools are 100% specific. In fact, at the time of peer-review process, the journals may follow a standardized set of comments one of which shall include whether they have checked for the presence of a similar publication using any of the available tools. Having found to indulge in such misconducts, the author’s institution should also be notified regarding the same. We also suggest International Committee of Medical Journal Editors to create a common database containing the details of authors who had attempted this form of scientific misconduct and their publication shall not be accepted by any of the journals in the future. Once an article is found to have considerable overlap with any other published article, editors should retract the article. A notice of retraction should be issued both as a hard copy and electronic version. In conclusion, we found a 4.8% incidence of redundant publications in a pharmacology journal similar to previous reports from various other fields of biomedical literature. Authors have to be made more aware of such misconduct, and the journals have to strengthen their reviewing process to eliminate the same. S. Kannan, S. Gowri1 Departments of Pharmacology, Subharti Medical College and Prosthodontics, 1Subharti Dental college, Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India
664 Indian Journal of Pharmacology | December 2014 | Vol 46 | Issue 6
Correspondence to: Dr. Kannan Sridharan, E-mail: [email protected]
References 1.
Durani P. Duplicate publications: Redundancy in plastic surgery literature. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg 2006;59:975-7. 2. Kim SY, Hahm CK, Bae CW, Cho HM. Duplicate publications in Korean medical journals indexed in KoreaMed. J Korean Med Sci 2008;23:131-3. 3. Qi X, Yang M, Ren W, Jia J, Wang J, Han G, et al. Find duplicates among the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library Databases in systematic review. PLoS One 2013;8:e71838. 4. Gwilym SE, Swan MC, Giele H. One in 13 ‘original’ articles in the journal of bone and joint surgery are duplicate or fragmented publications. J Bone Joint Surg Br 2004;86:743-5. 5. Hennessey KK, Williams AR, Afshar K, Macneily AE. Duplicate publications: A sample of redundancy in the journal of urology. Can Urol Assoc J 2012;6:177-80. 6. Schein M, Paladugu R. Redundant surgical publications: Tip of the iceberg? Surgery 2001;129:655-61. 7. Errami M, Wren JD, Hicks JM, Garner HR. eTBLAST: A web server to identify expert reviewers, appropriate journals and similar publications. Nucleic Acids Res 2007;35:W12-5. 8. Fang FC, Steen RG, Casadevall A. Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2012;109:17028-33. 9. Kim SY, Bae CW, Hahm CK, Cho HM. Duplicate publication rate decline in Korean medical journals. J Korean Med Sci 2014;29:172-5. 10. Kannan S, Gowri S. A study with spoof paper – Reflection of reviewing processes in open – Access journals. J Pharmacol Pharmacother 2014;5:70. 11. Kannan S, Deshpande SP, Gogtay NJ, Thatte UM. Policy of reviewing statistics in Indian medical and surgical journals. J Pharmacol Pharmacother 2013;4:139-40.
Copyright of Indian Journal of Pharmacology is the property of Medknow Publications & Media Pvt. Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
