RE: OA as provision against salami and double publishing

["Michael Mabe" <mabe@stm-assoc.org>]

While it is unclear to me whether OA will necessarily help 
identify plagiary and double publishing, and I have sympathy with 
some of Phil Davis' views, I would like to challenge the idea, 
often current among some academics (and in this thread) that 
"salami publishing" is a widespread phenomenon.

Plagiarism seems to occur with an incidence rate of less than one 
paper in a thousand. Most publishers have set up mechanisms to 
deal with plagiarism and encourage their editors to report it. 
The CrossRef initiative alluded to in this thread (CrossCheck) is 
an attempt to make such checking routine at a mechanical level 
across a wide range of publishers at the submission stage. 
Publishers are doing this because trust and authority lie at the 
heart of their value added; ensuring the integrity of what is 
published isn't just an ethical good, it is also good for 
reputation, branding and the future submission of articles and 
their download and use.

"Salami publishing" however, the belief that other authors are 
mendaciously slicing their work up into "least publishing units", 
has little evidence for it as a widespread activity and I believe 
it is largely an "urban myth". It is noteworthy that it is always 
"other" unnamed authors who are reported as doing this. But what 
about the evidence?

If the hypothesis that this was a widespread phenomenon was true 
we would expect to see an inexorable increase in the number of 
papers published by each author per annum. This is not the case. 
In ISI data I analysed with a colleague a few years ago (Mabe and 
Amin ASLIB Proc 54(3).149-57, 2002) the annual productivity of 
unique papers per unique author *declines* from about 1.0 in 1954 
to about 0.75 in 2000.

What is going on then? The answer lies, I believe, in perception. 
While actual productivity has not increased, collaboration levels 
have. Coauthorship rates have risen from an average of 1.75 in 
1954 to about 4 now. Authors are not slicing their work up more 
but they are appearing as coauthors more often, and, thereby, 
gaining more papers to list in their personal bibliographies. 
Their colleagues (who of course don't think that they are doing 
this too) see increasingly large bibliographies and jump to the 
conclusion that more *papers* are being published for less 
material. There are not more *papers* but there are more 
*authorships*.

Does this mean that "salami publishing" never occurs? I don't 
think it would be possible to claim that. However, the idea that 
it is widespread seems to be falsified by the data.

Best Michael

Michael A Mabe

Chief Executive Officer
International Association of STM Publishers
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Phil Davis
Sent: 31 January 2008 23:07
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Re: OA as provision against salami and double publishing

Bernie points out a nuanced distinction when it comes to salami 
and double publishing.  The Nature article assumes that it is 
caused solely by authors who are trying to game the system.  I 
pointed out the case of a publisher who decided to take advantage 
of the system, and especially the trust relationship between 
publisher and library.  My main point was that the additional 
transparency afforded by a Utopian OA future does not put an end 
to salami and double-publishing.  The CrossRef initiative, 
described in an earlier post by Joachim Engelland, assumes that 
all publishers share the same social norms and standards for what 
is acceptable practice, and effectively take action to prevent 
violations from taking place in their journals.  Preventing 
salami and double publishing is not an accessibility issue, and 
there is nothing inherent in OA publishing to suggest that this 
form of publishing, by its design, abides by a higher standard of 
practice.

--Phil Davis

Philip M. Davis
PhD Student
Department of Communication
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
email: pmd8@cornell.edu
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/~pmd8/resume


B.G. Sloan wrote:
> From: Bernie Sloan [snip]
>
> [E]arlier posts regarding the recent item in Nature, etc., seem to
imply that
> authors sometimes do this to inflate their publication records for
their vitae.
> ***
>
> References:
> [1] Davis, P. M. (2005). The Ethics of Republishing: A Case Study of
> Emerald/MCB University Press Journals. Library Resources & Technical
> Services, 49(2), 72-78. http://hdl.handle.net/1813/2572
>
> [2] Davis, P. M. (2005). Article duplication in Emerald/MCB journals
is
> more extensive than first reported: Possible conflicts of financial
and
> functional interests are uncovered. Library Resources & Technical
> Services, 49(3), 138-150. http://hdl.handle.net/1813/2574