Admitting my own shortfalls in this scenario, it had been brought to my attention by an eagle-eyed reader, that an article we published in September 2006 is an almost verbatim copy of one we published 2 years previously.

The work submitted to JWC in September 2006 was originally written as an assignment for a post-graduate MSc and after marking, was sent to us for publication. It was peer-reviewed and, after some slight amendments suggested by the reviewers, was published. Whilst I was aware that we had published on this topic before, I did not check all the previous articles.

We were just about to publish another article by this author, so I have pulled it.

I also plan to let the university know on Monday when the course leader is back.

Am I correct to do the above and should I make some announcement regarding this issue in the Journal and to PubMed etc?

Deborah Glover
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For me, I first assume this was an honest mistake by a novice author; so I would try to touch base with them and find out why this occurred. If I am satisfied it was an honest mistake, I will leave it there, but could write an editorial, not mention names but an issue that all readers and authors need to know about. My fear is if I had not given them a chance to explain behind closed doors, and it was an honest mistake, would I not have meted out harsher punishment if they are punished in public?

Adamson Muula
Malawi Medical Journal
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This is not sufficient (esp. "not mentions names" is impossible if you want the article to appear as retracted and duplicate publication in PubMed).

There must be a clear retraction statement, citing plagiarism as reason. As written in http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/errata.html: "The retraction must be labeled and published in citable form; that is, the retraction must appear on a numbered page in an issue of the journal that published the retracted article."

Regarding, “I also plan to let the university know on Monday when the course leader is back.”

Yes, this should be done.

Obviously, before you do all of the above you should hear what the plagiarist has to say in his/her defense.

Gunther Eysenbach
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I believe that plagiarists will continue plagiarising if they are not exposed very publicly. If people are interested in the reasons for my view, I set them out recently in an article in the BMJ (Chalmers I. Role of systematic reviews in detecting plagiarism: case of Asim Kurjak. BMJ 2006;333:594-596.)

Iain Chalmers
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One of my favorite WAME-member editors (and an ex-boss), Rich Rothenberg, cautioned me to always suspect incompetence before malevolence. As above, I'd suggest you ask first, judge the response, and then divulge, prn.

Erica
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I am not sure if I quite agree with an optimistic approach. In this case we are dealing with a "verbatim copy". My personal experience shows in such cases the originality of the work and presence of a research work at all, are questionable. How can you trust that someone has actually done a research work when all (or most) statements are plagiarized?

We had a paper that was also a verbatim copy. Upon contacting the author, he claimed that this had been a mistake and he was not aware of it, etc. What was the result? We found out that 2 previous manuscripts also submitted by him were plagiarized, too. One of our editorial board members quoted "once a cheater, always a cheater!" In the above case, we informed the author, and also sent a copy of the correspondence to the university authorities.

Arash Etemadi
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Following Iain Chalmers' paper in BMJ, the editors of the Croatian Medical Journal asked COPE for its opinion on a number of papers by Prof Kurjak. A report has been sent to the editors with a recommendation to seek an investigation by the relevant university.

Harvey Marcovitch
Chairman, COPE
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The  accident/mistake theory sounds unlikely. However, if  found guilty, throw the book (or should I say the journal?) at him/her. Publicly. VERY Publicly. We do not want plagiarists in the research community. We have enough probems without them.

Tom Jefferson
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Re verbatim copies - that's a really good point, thanks. I have had the experience of a verbatim copy that came from official government information and was improperly referenced. That is the alternative to it not being written at all. 

Vivienne Miller
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From our discussion, it gets more and more clear to me that the editor needs to find out how this came about. There are a hundred and one explanations, which we may not know until the editor asks the author(s). Until such a time, it may be less than prudent to decide what action to take. And when the editor contacts the authors, it would be important to know if there was an ulterior motive. Our colleagues in the law field take pains to discern a criminal mind. Somebody shoots a colleague and it is an accident. Someone else does that and it is involuntary manslaughter. Another does it and it is first degree murder.

I would side with the lawyers not to judge a priori, but to be cautious.

Adamson Muula
Malawi Medical Journal

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The COPE Web site (http://www.publicationethics.org.uk) contains a series of flowcharts on how editors can deal with common dilemmas—including plagiarism.

Harvey Marcovitch
Chairman, COPE
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Several authors see their articles published in a medical journal, and after 2 or 3 years, these same authors submit the same article with some very obvious modifications to another medical journal that will publish it (there are some examples). Is this ethical? Should there be any litigation between the first and the second medical journal?

Hnid Karim
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We have had a lot of discussion on similiar topics on this list. In my opinion it is unacceptable, but it does happen.

Rodolfo Soca
Former Director, 16 de Abril
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I agree with Rodolfo. Unless the follow-up article has substantial new data or new analyses, this is duplicate publication. The editor(s) of the journal that publishes the second (duplicate) article should issue a retraction notice if/when they find out about it. The author(s)' supervisor(s) need to know about it, and I would black list those authors from publishing in my journal in the future.

Bill Tierney
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Just to clarify, even if there is substantial new data, a paper may still qualify as 'redundant' (rather than duplicate?) and thus be ethically questionable, right? For instance, consider an author who first publishes a paper with a small number of data points. S/he then continues to collect data on the same problem and later decides to publish a second paper by combining the data from the first study with the additional data collected. The combined data in the second study is then presented with additional analyses that provide new insights into the problem being studied. However, no indication is given that a portion of the data from the second paper was derived from data reported in the first paper.

Such a situation would still be problematic if, for example, both papers were to be later included in a meta analysis as contributing two independent data sets.

Miguel Roig