Redundant Publication—How to Avoid Duplication

Abstract

We all know that duplicate publication of an article is considered self-plagiarism and is not allowed in peerreviewed journals. The Journal of Digital Imaging has a statement in the submission process that a manuscript has not been submitted to any other journals for publication. This is a common statement that peer-reviewed journals often use. Accusations of duplicate publications have wide ranging consequences. For example, such an accusation may bar all the authors on a manuscript from future submissions to a journal, the author’s Department Chair or Dean may be informed, an internal investigation may be launched, the local newspaper might report on scientific misconduct by faculty members, and the repercussions may effect a person’s promotion, tenure, and reputation. How can an author get caught in the position of unknowingly submitting a manuscript containing material that could be considered a duplicate publication? Duplicate publication includes the text in an article, but it also includes figures and data sets previously published. If an author uses a figure in an article published in a blog, an abstract, another journal article, a teaching file, or published lecture notes, that figure may have a copyright associated with it or it at the very least it has been published. This figure could be a graph or drawing produced by the author or a radiology image. Once it has been published, it cannot be included in a future article without acknowledgement and for most peer review journals, the ability to assign the copyright to that figure to the journal accepting the manuscript for publication. If the author uses a dataset for an article, that dataset has been published. Different parts of the dataset can be used for subsequent articles but not the prior published dataset. When an author wishes to present research at a scientific meeting, it is common to submit an abstract to the organization holding the meeting and if accepted, that abstract could be published by the organization either in a proceedings format or online. Often, the author assigns the copyright to the organization publishing the abstract. Signing copyright forms is part of the publication process and most of us sign them without much thought about the future consequences. But suppose the author who presented the paper at a scientific meeting went on to produce a manuscript and included figures and text from the original abstract. That is duplicate publication. Many manuscripts are placed in Open Access Institutional Repositories. There were 65 institutional repositories in the USA reported in August 2015. This list includes 36 major medical centers and 29 colleges and universities and more repositories are planned. Most, possibly all of the authors submitting the JDI are unaware if a repository exists and even if they are aware of the repository, they are not aware of the policies and restrictions. Many institutions allow the authors to maintain the copyright to their work. In this case, authors are allowed to post the article on other open access sites and on their personal website. Journals should seek out and publish work that has not been previously published in print, web, or other electronic publications. Redundant publication occurs when multiple papers are written without reference in the text, and share the same text, data or results. In order to help identify potential plagiarism of any kind journal editors, including myself, use a tool called iThenticate to search for similarities in any form of publication on the web. Because of the availability of these tools, there is a * Janice Honeyman-Buck honeymanbuck@aol.com

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