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Berquist.Thomas{at}mayo.edu
In the June 2008 issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), Robert J. Stanley [1] provided a heartfelt editorial describing his 5 years as Editor in Chief as "a most memorable time." During his tenure, the AJR converted to Web-based online submissions resulting in a dramatic increase in the number of submitted articles. The increase in the number of submitted manuscripts that our journal has experienced is the tip of the iceberg. Online submissions, growth in the number of journals, and open access have resulted in an explosion of scientific information on the Web. The extensive information available to authors and readers is a true benefit. However, with the expanded use of Web-based information, there has also been an increase in scientific misconduct and the number of duplicate publications.
In the January 1999 issue of the AJR, Lee F. Rogers [2], then Editor in Chief, wrote an editorial titled "Duplicate Publications: It's Not So Much the Duplicity As It Is the Deceit." In the article, Rogers stated that "duplicate publications are the bane of scientific journals and the overriding concern of editors." Since that time, the number of duplicate or redundant publications has continued to increase.
The January 24, 2008, issue of Library Journal Academic Newswire provided an interesting summary about duplicate publication [3]. Medline indexes more than 5,000 journals in the United States and throughout the world. It was estimated that several hundred thousand duplicate publications may be in the current Medline database. Mounir Errami and Harold Garner [4] reviewed not only duplicate publication, but also plagiarism and cosubmission in the January 2008 issue of Nature. The results of their automated search of biomedical abstracts suggests that the number of duplicate journal publications is definitely on the rise. When Errami and Garner extrapolated their database to the 17 million articles in the Medline database, they estimated that there are as many as 200,000 duplications. They also detected a steady rise in the number of duplicate publications from 1975 through 2000.
This problem is reinforced by the number of articles published in specialty journals worldwide. In recent reports, investigators found redundant or duplicate publications in 1.4–7.6% of the articles reviewed ranging from a single journal over 1 year to 22,433 articles in 70 journals over a 3-year period [5–7].
How can authors avoid redundant and duplicate publications? The number and quality of publications remain the primary metric for academic promotion and scientific productivity at academic medical centers. Authors are faced with the pressure to "publish or perish." Unfortunately, it has become common practice to meet the criteria for academic advancement by submitting multiple articles about similar topics, the part 1 and part 2 article phenomenon, and submitting the same or similar articles to different journals. The AJR uses the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to journals [8]. The ICMJE was created to provide guidelines to authors and editors to facilitate their submission of clear and accurate scientific studies. The document [8] also sets ethical standards that we are all expected to maintain.
An author's first step when considering article submission to the AJR should be a careful review of the AJR's Author Guidelines, which can be found online at www.ajronline.org in the Instructions to Authors section. The first bullet item on the list states, "Submitted manuscripts should not contain previously published material and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere." The ICMJE guidelines [8] more clearly inform the author about his or her responsibility as follows:
When submitting a paper, the author must always make a full statement about all submissions and previous reports (including meeting presentations and posting of results in registries) that might be regarded as redundant or duplicate publication of the same or very similar work. The author must alert the editor if the manuscript includes subjects about which the authors have published a previous report or have submitted a related report to another publication. Any such report must be referred to and referenced in the new paper. Copies of such material should be included with the submitted paper to help the editor decide how to handle the matter.
In addition, Cho et al. [9], in an article published in the Annals of Thoracic Surgery, provided a list of criteria that authors can use to avoid duplicate or redundant publication. The list includes the following criteria that characterize duplicate publications:
There are instances in which similarity can be useful. For example, it is often valuable to provide updates, such as a larger series based on an initial article, as long as the primary article is properly referenced and submitted appropriately with the new submission. Also, a second publication in a different journal intended for a different audience may be acceptable. The ICMJE [8] provides the following criteria for acceptable secondary publications in different journals.
How should the editorial staff of the AJR more effectively deal with the issues of duplicate publication? Our primary role is to provide an efficient system for authors resulting in publication of high-quality, scientifically sound online and print articles that serve our readers, further research, and improve patient care. It is unfortunate that significant energy is also required to ensure that our product meets the standards of the ICMJE. Our current online Web-based submission system, Editorial Manager (Aries Systems), provides the editorial staff with tools to quickly review similar publications, find other articles written by the authors of the submitted manuscript, and perform title searches on PubMed. In addition to appropriate audits of topics, authors, and titles, we must consider acquiring text comparison and duplication detection software to assist us in our task. As suggested by Errami and Garner [4], we must, in addition to following the guidelines listed earlier, also develop clear standards about what information is appropriate for reuse, especially in our Materials and Methods sections of all submitted manuscripts. Finally, we must make authors aware that these audits are part of our ongoing mission to ensure the quality of the AJR.
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  T. H. Berquist Peer Review and Biomedical Publications: We All Have the Same Issues Am. J. Roentgenol., November 1, 2009; 193(5): 1199 - 1200. [Full Text] [PDF]
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T. H. Berquist The copyright transfer agreement: we sign it, but do we understand it? Am. J. Roentgenol., April 1, 2009; 192(4): 849 - 851. [Full Text] [PDF]
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T. H. Berquist Publication in the AJR: Critical Interactions among Authors, Reviewers, and Section Editors Am. J. Roentgenol., November 1, 2008; 191(5): 1291 - 1292. [Full Text] [PDF]
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