Re: Covert Article Republishing Discovered in Emerald/MCB UP 1989-2003

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

Phil and I have discussed this when we were both in Charleston next week
and I have rather a different take on this.

I cannot see how an editor of a journal could not have been unaware that
an article in a journal for which he or she was contractually and actually
responsible for all the content had not passed through his or her
editorial hands. Some editors are less than competent but in all the
journals I have ever worked with the system is basically the same. The
editor processes the papers. The publisher receives them and puts them
through its processes. The editor usually makes up the content list of
each issue (though not invariably) but it would be a very strange editor
who did not look at the published issue. A whole issue of alien matter
(and we have examples of this) could not possibly have been inserted into
the journal (untouched by the editor) without the editor knowing about it.
I use the word "editor" throughout the above to mean the "academic
editor".

Please note that I am not trying to excuse the publisher. Publishers, whom
I spoke to in Charleston, were like me astonished by what Phil has
uncovered. I have never heard of anything like it and nor has anyone else
I spoke to.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Davis" <pmd8@cornell.edu>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, November 10, 2004 12:59 AM
Subject: RE: Covert Article Republishing Discovered in Emerald/MCB UP
1989-2003

> Rick and others,
>
> Based on my investigation, the authors reported that they did not resubmit
> their articles to another Emerald/MCB UP journal but had received a
> request from the publisher for permission to republish.  Did the academic
> editors know?  In many cases that I could document, they did not.  If they
> DID know and had followed editorial policy -- which was to peer review
> each submission -- we would have seen slightly different articles being
> published.  But we didn't.  In all of the 409 examples I discovered, the
> two (or three) republished articles were verbatim copies (save some copy
> editing and reformatting).  One editor of a management journal stated (on
> condition of anonymity), "I can categorically state that when I was the
> editor I was not aware of any such practice, and would neither condone nor
> practice such republication."
>
> To answer your question, it appears that editors (at least in some
> documented cases) did not know of the duplicate republishing.
>
> --Phil Davis