Dear colleagues,
AJTCAM rejected a manuscript about 4 weeks ago on the basis that it had nothing new; 2 weeks later we found that it appeared online in another journal. This must have been submitted to the 2 journals at the same time. Should AJTCAM inform the other journal of this breach? Advise please.

Thank you.

Clement O. Adewunmi
AJTCAM
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Yes. This is unacceptable.

Margaret Rees
Editor in Chief, Journal of the British Menopause Society
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This is a very serious issue raised by Clement Oladapo Adewunmi. We here in Pakistan are facing the same problem. Authors do simultaneously submit articles to multiple journals despite stating that the article has not been submitted elsewhere. We have examples in which the same article has been published by 2 journals. There should be a WAME policy regarding how to deal with the authors who breach the "instructions to authors" or the journal's policy.

Akhtar Sherin
Executive Editor, J Postgrad Med Inst

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Several comments. First, your Information for Authors should state clearly that you do NOT accept manuscripts submitted simultaneously to several journals. This is an acceptable practice in legal publishing (at least in the United States), but not in medical publishing.

Second, publishing the same article in 2 journals without telling either editor upfront is a violation (in my opinion) of medical publishing ethics. There a litany of reasons, which I won't go into. If you have an issue of duplicate publication in your journal (and if I were in your shoes), then I would address this allegation with the author, the editor of the other journal, and finally some authority to whom the authors report (chair, grant funder). I would direct you to guidelines provided by WAME, COPE, CSE, or the AMA Manual of Style on process. This is serious stuff, so be clear on suitable approaches beyond proceeding.

Michael Vasko
Managing Editor, Arch Phys Med Rehabil
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