engleski

Identical or nearly so. Duplicate publication as a separate publication type in PubMed

"Duplicate Publication" was introduced into Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) in 1991 as a separate publication type, and is defined as "Work consisting of an article or book of identical or nearly identical material published simultaneously or successively to material previously published elsewhere, without acknowledgment of the prior publication". Our aim was to assess how journals corrected duplicate publications indexed by NLM and how these corrections were visible in PubMed. The data set included 1011 articles listed as "duplicate publication [pt]" in PubMed on 16 January 2013. We checked PubMed to identify if duplicate articles were linked with a Correction/Comment notice. We also checked the journals’ websites for published notices and identified the reasons provided for the duplications in those notices. The time from the duplicate article publication to the notice of duplication/retraction in PubMed and/or journals was also recorded. 624 (61.7%) duplicate publications identified in PubMed lacked any notice in respective journals. 152 notices of 342 duplicate publications (ie, published twice or more times) were found in journals and were marked as Comments/Corrections in PubMed. The reasons for duplications are presented in the Table. Median time from duplicate publication to notice of duplication was 8 months (95% CI=6-10). 130 out of 152 articles with notices were available online but only 34 (26.1%) had links to the published notices of duplication. 24 (2.4%) articles out of 45 indexed duplicate publications were retracted: 10 due to publishers’ errors, 11 due to authors’ errors (3 notices could not be accessed). 14 retractions were marked as "retracted publication [pt]" in PubMed and 10 more retractions were found only at journal websites. More than half of duplicate publications identified in PubMed have not been corrected by journals. All stakeholders in research publishing should take seriously the integrity of the published record and take a proactive role in alerting the publishing community of redundant publications.

duplicate publication as topic; ethics; scientific misconduct; peer review; PubMed

nije evidentirano