As any hard-working scientist knows, it’s difficult to rack up a respectable publication list on one’s CV.
Or is it? Today, while during a routine PubMed search, I ran into something puzzling: two seemingly identical articles:
Curious, I took a closer look. The bottom article appeared in Cell in 2006, while the top was published a year later with the same title and author list in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology. The abstracts were also identical. Clicking on the top version, I found it to be a book chapter in a Springer title devoted to (according to its website) “meetings proceedings” of “multidisciplinary and dynamic findings in the broad fields of experimental medicine and biology.” I thought it was a bit odd to publish a proceedings of work that had already been published, but at that point I supposed that book publishing can lag behind that of journals, so perhaps the relevant meeting had come first.
My university doesn’t have access to Adv Exp Med Biol, but a colleague who does took a quick look and said that, though the article indeed was the same, she couldn’t see any reference that the work had been published in previously in Cell – except that in its Acknowledgements, there is a link to the Cell paper’s supplementary data, suggesting that the Cell paper was published before the book chapters were even assembled (ruling out the book publishing lagtime theory). Meanwhile, Adv Exp Med Biol apparently has an impact factor; I assume Elsevier, the owner of Cell Press, gave permission for Springer to mirror the article without acknowledging its source, but was it really wise to give up citations on a high-profile paper to a close competitor?
More interestingly, how common is this sort of double publication? And how do people feel about it?
Double penetration, eh? (sorry).
Anyway, that looks like fun. I’ve had a very quick google, and the meeting of which the Adv Exp Med Biol is proceedings appeared to be in May 2006. As the Cell paper came out in March … ah! here we go:
so that backs up your supplemental lagtime theory thing. That’s pretty lousy editing if it hasn’t been signed over properly isn’t it? It must be legit. But then, it feels a bit odd—none of the other chapters I looked at in that book seem to be papers.
Very strange. And the Cell paper is also in f1000. Hmm. I might have to have a poke around when I get to work tomorrow. (hey! is the A. Griekspoor the A. Griekspoor, does anyone know?)
I just don’t understand why anyone would do it. What purpose does it serve?
Was also going to comment on the A. Griekspoor. It’s got to be him, there aren’t that many.
Well spotted, Jenny! I’ve never seen an exact duplicate like this before, just your usual suspects of meeting proceedings etc.
“What purpose does it serve?”
“Oh, hey, when’s that book chapter deadline for that meeting? Oh, sh*t, really?!. What can we send them that’s almost ready?”
Just a thought…
I’ve seen it before. I wouldn’t say it is incredibly common, but it happens (identical titles and abstracts and all). It makes me feel about how it appears to make you feel. A bit bitter.
Although: I also have published in that “journal”. The whole time, we were unaware it was a book series, and therefore assimilated with a periodical in Medline. The book was “Neural Crest Induction and Differentiation” with an editor whom we knew remotely. We made an effort not to duplicate anything, in fact, I remember it being one of the more painful reviews I had to write from scratch. However, we published a shorter version of it subsequently, in French, in a physician’s journal. Not the same readership.
Does that make me a hypocrite? Perhaps.
Being a geek, I get a regular RSS feed from a Pubmed search for topics I’m interested in, in this case, hES cells. I was all excited that the Rancourt lab at University of Calgary (my friend worked in that lab, once upon a time) seemed to be publishing well again, until I realized that the two papers seemed almost identical, but submitted to different places.
This one in a small journal known as Human Reproduction was submitted on August 18, 2008; resubmitted on October 9, 2008; accepted on October 15, 2008.
The second one in Stem Cells and Development has an unknown submission date, but was published on December 8, 2008.
Both clearly come to the same conclusions, but there are slightly different authors on each, and one is in a book, not an article.
I still thought this was odd though.
I have picked up duplicates in reviewer/editor mode. You normally don’t expect duplication but sometimes something strikes a chord and you check it out. Last time it was a familiar figure that led me to the duplication.
In the good old days (well in the 1980s-90s), it was much more common to reproduce conference presentations in polished form as a paper. Many journals (especially those who perceive themselves as important) now specifically exclude this so there is a disincentive to publish in any form before appearance in a journal.
Just to note that the last author on this paper is a very well-respected scientist and I checked his website – he didn’t include the later paper in his formal publication list. So again I ask – why do it at all? I suppose, as Cath noted, sometimes you get roped into obligations and it’s an easy option. It’s good they didn’t change the title – obviously they’re not trying to pass it off as two pieces of work.
Are conference posters ‘publications’ then? What about the abstract books? What about Nature Precedings?
Sorry, I was responding to Brian, not you, Jenny.
I would suspect given that the senior author doesn’t have it in their list that the first author is the person who did this, without the senior guy knowing.
In some fields they are, for example computing. I’m last author on a conference ‘paper’ for an image analysis collaboration (‘last’ being least important in that field, I should point out), and this is the most prestigious place the work could have got into, according to the lead author. They simply don’t publish in journals at all.
As Brian said, in biology, I think it’s a dying art.
Richard, our posts crossed.
I don’t agree with your assumption. It was probably the result of an obligation and neither of them need to put it on their lists because after all, the Cell paper is about as prestigious as you can get (with apologies to a certain journal starting with N).
Could be. I’ll do a diff on the two papers at work when I have access, just for gits and shiggles.
Damn. There should have been a paragraph break in there somewhere.
Ack, just spent the last 25 mins trying to find the last example of similar outrageousness I came across not so long ago.
I found a study on some aspect of skin microbiology, I forget which, undertaken by a visiting Korean researcher in an Italian lab. I then found pretty much the exact same paper, in another journal, with 99% of the same content, written up by the Korean scientist, published the following year. The ‘duplicate’ paper wasn’t in a Korean language paper either.
I’m sure I filed them away somewhere while I decided what to do about it, but then I felt like a bit of a snitch.
Ideas?
I’ve published the same paper but in different languages (English and Spanish) in different scientific magazine, to publish my work in different languages and with certain types of changes (50%), I mean really honestly do not think this bad because I am giving you an opportunity to people so they can read them in their respective original languages. If they don’t know Spanish if can making it in English. The reason of this was that my work be readed for more people.
I want to be clear that there is a big difference between open mirroring (which I believe the present case to be) and recycling the same content in slightly altered form to make more publications, which is more akin to plagiarism. Alejandro’s language example is more like mirroring – if few people will read the Spanish one, it makes sense to get the word out other ways, if we accept that English is the main language of science. But the Cell paper in our example will have saturated the relevant audience – why regurgitate it again in a medium that few will ever see? And it doesn’t even pad your CV, as the identical title will make it impossible to report both without embarrassing oneself.
Jim, when I was an editor we often got emails from concerned readers reporting suspected plagiarism. Editors are happy to look into these queries and no one will think you are a ‘snitch’. Your name will never be mentioned in any investigation. Next time just report it.
On the flip side, I’ve heard that there are loads of scientific studies in Chinese journals that get effectively republished in English because the non-Chinese groups in question innocently did not know that the research results even existed.
If this happened at Nature (someone let us know that a paper we had published was essentially the same as one elsehwere, or vice versa) we would (and do) look into it and if necessary publish a correction or retraction.
If a reader suspects some kind of scientific misconduct, we certainly do look into these matters confidentially, but not if the complaint is anonymous. However, our remit is the paper itself – scientific misconduct invariably goes beyond the paper itself so it needs to be reported to the funding agency and/or employer, too.
There must be times when mirroring is legitimate, or respectable labs wouldn’t do it. I just can’t find any information or guidelines on this issue, anywhere. Which in itself is strange.
Jenny – actually had 50% similarities between the two papers.
Alejandro’s language example is more like mirroring
What looks like a study on the rate of occurrence of such things here.
In any case I have not plagiarized, anyonen is my creation of my brain and love.
On the other, hand I would never make this, apart from that my nature it is to be creative.I love that.
Verrrrrrrry interesting. But I think you’re all over-thinking this. I’d guess that Cath’s analysis is correct. To save you trolling back through all the comments, here it is verbatim:
“Oh, hey, when’s that book chapter deadline for that meeting? Oh, sh*t, really?!. What can we send them that’s almost ready?”
[late to the party]
so, the first publication is a book series? with chapters? So I take it that doesn’t “count” as much as a publication in a journal? (or more I guess some people would say)
I think it is a bit unfortenate that they share the same title, although if it truly is the same paper than I guess it is just a reprint of the article? Then I guess Cell might be the ones who would like to be acknowledged in the chapter as I had to do with my dissortation thesis “the following papers have been reprinted with the permission of the follownig journals X and Y” and I had to write and ask if I could use the articles in that form.
Funny though, I’ve been contemplating “the same title of several talks” when I was asked to provide a list of my talks as a complement to my CV. And that wasn’t even “prestigeous” talks… and I know that the talks differed after about half, it was mainly a fairly general title.
Åsa – my CV also has some invited talks listed that have the same title – which looks bad, in a way. But I’m not sure that artificially changing the title so that it looks like a different talk, even though the content is essentially the same, is any better.
Hm. Somebody oughta blog post about that. I’m just sayin’.
Austin, that’s a great link. The authors predict 117,500 duplicate/reprint/mirror citations overall in the literature. (I love the fact they named their algorithm “Déjà vu”!) That’s a lot of dupes. In the same study, they predict far fewer instances of plagiarism.
I see nothing wrong with giving similar talks. A talk is a roadshow trailing the eventual paper, in most cases. The story isn’t going to change tremendously by the time you’re happy to talk about it in public. I do appreciate speakers who spend maybe the last 5 minutes showcasing something new and preliminary.
I think it is a bit unfortunate that they share the same title
I completely disagree. The identical title flags up a mirroring. Imagine these two papers had different titles – it would be very easy to put both in your CV to make it seem longer, none the wiser if whoever’s judging you doesn’t look up the actual papers. Far better to be transparent that it’s just redundancy, don’t you think? otherwise it really is plagiarism.
Jenny> your last paragraph was what I wanted to say in my first sentence of the second paragraph 🙂 that if it is the same you really need to call it the same. I guess the problem is that it is a repeat?
I guess the main thing with the titles of the talks were that they didn’t sound that specific and not “as eye catching” but then again, sometimes you need to provide a title before the talk is even done and a broader title is preferred?
Yes, it’s pretty common to change your title on the day. I think almost everyone tweaks it. I don’t see talks as a real, bone fide part of the scientific record, so for me it’s not so crucial. You can’t capture such ephemeral – except with Proceedings, but these are always post-massaged anyway.
Perhaps not quite on topic but I had encountered a case of seeing double when I was reviewing a manuscript a few years back. As I read through the introduction, the phrasing struck me as rather familiar. I was moved eventually to check the introduction of one of my own publications and, sure enough, about a page of text had been lifted word for word!
I do hope you informed the editors of the plagiarism! That’s really unforgivable. You have to be an idiot, though, not to at least try to tweak a cut and paste job.
A purpose of what he says Stepehen many years ago I gave a summary of all data and conclusions (it was a innovative hypothesis) a person to publish it in an abstract journal, since I go to Barcelona at the other following day. After returning from Spain (4 year),I knew I never submitting my summary, yet he had done his doctoral thesis with the same innovative hypothesis of mine but most developed hypothesis with other data and species and all the compliments and congratulations, the jobs etc. for that person. It’s a shame. Was so very much angry that I’ve break the paper and throw it away at the trash. This Thesis is cited always in this continent at least.
It can not solve problem. Because you trust in people.
Is like a stolen of the design of the scientific idea.
What a terrible experience. I too have had ideas stolen and this is why today I am very careful about who I trust with unpublished data. Once you have an experience like that, I think it changes you forever.
This is why I always report any incidents of plagiarism that I come across. But many wrongdoers will go unpunished – and yes, a lot of them will become successful off the back of their victims. But I guess this is true in larger life as well as in science.
Austin’s link to the study in citation duplication reminds me of a similar exercise where medline abstracts were searched using the sort of text matching tools that are used to detect plagiarism in undergraduate assignment submissions (you need access to nature to read this). They found that plagiarism was at a fairly low frequency (0.2% of articles in arXiv preprints) but a much higher level of self-plagiarism at over 10%. I think we had a NN discussion thread on this a year or so back but I can’t find it just now.
As for a principled view on this, I suggest the following advice.
Jenny, finally I think this person will never be with a clear conscience until the end of his days with what he did. It’s one of the thing I’m have moved away from the field of biology in this country.
That’s really sad, Alejandro. It’s biology’s loss in Chile.
Richard: I do it independently, but I will not congress and so on.
Brian, a relevant thing for the present case in that link is this: “Subsequent republication by the author of copyrighted text without permission and citation is technically illegal—but permission is usually granted pro forma.” They probably had permission, but there was no citation (disclaimer: unless my colleague missed it. I still haven’t been able to see the original first-hand).
Yes – most journals allow use by yourself of parts of published work, but they normally require citation.
CrossCheck is another tool to detect duplicates and plagiarism, but is intended primarily for publishers.
And one of the coauthors of the two papers in question really is Alex Griekspoor of Papers fame. The Cell paper also made in on the cover of that issue (and was cited by me in a review I wrote about testicular cancer).
Yes – most journals allow use by yourself of parts of published work
How about the entire thing verbatim, as in the present case?
Sounds like Griekspoor made an intelligent career move. 🙂
I’ll ask him about it on Friday next 🙂
How about the entire thing verbatim, as in the present case?
When you review a work or include it in another work, the amount of content you are allowed to use is strictly limited. So I suspect that the complete re-use is a breach of copyright. Unless, you are an employee of an organization (e.g.US or UK Government) that insists on retaining copyright. So are those individuals at liberty to repeat publish?
Brian> i mentioned something about this earlier. At least when I reprinted my articles in my thesis I had to write the journals and obtain copyright for that even if they were my articles. I mean, once they are printed, as far I as remember, most journal obtains the copyright from you….
In Sweden, copyright allows for something like 10% or a maximum of 8 pages, evne for your own work, if I remember corerctly… but of course, this would differ between countries, right?
@Asa – Copyright is governed by international treaty – The Berne Convention – so I expect the rules are international.
Sorry – not really paying attention tonight. Yes, I did inform the editor and that put the kibosh on the paper. I guess it may have popped up somewhere else by now but hopefully the authors got the message.
obviously I can’t spell by the way. sorry about that. ahh… Brian, maybe so then. Would make sense to me.
Hi Jennifer,
how are you? I think I can shed some light on this funny/weird/annoying matter.
Indeed, I did give a talk at a meeting in May 2006, proudly showing the work we did that was just accepted and published online in Cell. At the meeting, they ( I don’t recall if it was one of the organizers or someone from Springer) asked me if they could add the abstract of my paper to a meetings proceedings, which I agreed to.
Indeed, after the meeting, I got an email from Springer:
“I’m delighted to learn that you will contribute your abstract to
Springer’s proceedings for the IFOM-IEO Meeting on Cancer. The book of
proceedings will be titled “Advances in Molecular Oncology,” and it will
be part of our series “Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology.”
All books in this series have a standard library adoption of several
hundred copies, and are indexed in PubMed, Medline, Embase, Index
Medicus, and several other citation sites. The proceedings will be
published both in print and online form.”
They then proceeded to bug me about sending in an “expanded” abstract, and to sign copyright transfer forms. I did not sign these, but told them to contact Elsevier, as I was well aware that the copyright to this published story rest with the publishers of Cell. I did send an email to Cell to ask if Springer could include the abstract of this paper in their proceedings.
Some time passed, and a few months later, to my astonishment when I did an ego-search in Pubmed, I found that I had published another paper that I was not aware of I had no idea they would publish the separate chapters of this book as new, individual papers in Pubmed.
I don’t know if Springer got permission to re-publish the abstract, and decided on their own to reproduce (not even in color) all the figures and text, or that Elsevier/Cell allowed them to copy everything (maybe they have some back-and-forth deal on issues like this).
Is it a bit weird? Yes. Is it annoying to have a duplicate entry in Pubmed? Yes. Do I think I should spend a lot of time correcting a possible copyright infringement between Springer and Elsevier? No. I never add this extra “publication” to my CV, or tally the few citations that cite the book chapter, not the original (who DOES that??? that’s some lazy citing).
So, no last minute chapter submission ‘error’, or attempt to beef up a CV, but an overzealous editor of a proceedings book that may or may not be infringing on copyright.
Hope this clarifies matters. All the best,
Mathijs
PS: Indeed the Alexander Griekspoor, of Papers, Enzyme X and Disctop fame, alerted me to this post
Alex Griekspoor is a god.
Hi Mathijs, thanks for your comment and for clarifying matters. I knew there had to be some logical explanation for the mirroring. I am really shocked at the cavalier behavior of this Springer title – if it were me, I would have asked Elsevier to look into the copyright infringement (but then I had a career break as an editor a few years back, so these sorts of matters are of particular interest to me). It’s not just laziness — it’s theft. And as people don’t know the full story, they might be inclined to look towards the authors for an explanation. I really wonder how often this happens?
Personally, if I were you and compiling a CV, I wouldn’t hesitate to tally the total number of citations for each because, for all intents and purposes, they refer to the same thing. But I suppose a Cell paper speaks for itself. 😉
Met vriendelijke groeten
Jenny