Re: Load balancing

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

"To repeat however - this is nothing to do with the publishing practice
which you have exposed." -- Anthony Watkinson

If I understand Anthony's argument correctly, his response puts the onus
on the author, who may have submitted identical copies to multiple Emerald
journals (paragraph 3).  While I postulated this cause in the outset of my
research, authors (including Bernie Sloan responding to liblicense-l),
claimed only to submit one copy and remember receiving a request from the
publisher to republish.  Most of the authors I spoke to received such a
request from the publisher.  So, your argument that the publisher was
merely caught in the middle of author-fraud may not be valid.  The
publisher has also admitted the practice of republishing without
attribution in writing.

This has "nothing to do with the publishing practice?"  The data suggest
that this has everything to do with the publishing practice.

--Phil Davis


At 04:25 PM 11/21/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear Phil,
>
>I think you are conflating a number of different issues. In the case you
>have been investigating it is clear that the articles did not go through
>the editorial processes of more than one journal. If they had gone through
>the normal route the final versions would have been different because
>there would be different referees and different copy editors - even if the
>original submissions had been identical.
>
>Publishers do not receive articles as the publisher.. Sometimes the office
>may be located at the publisher but it is the editor's office and operates
>just as it would operate if it is in the institution of the editor. Any
>editor of any library journal subscribing to this list will confirm.
>
>The publisher does not come into play until the article is accepted and
>sent by the editor into the production process. It is quite possible (and
>does happen) for an article in the same or more or less the same form
>submitted to a number of journals, which may or may not be published by
>the same publisher. This is of course forbidden in instructions to authors
>and is not accepted as correct practice by any of theacademic communities
>I am familiar with. It can happen that an article can be published in one
>journal at more or less the same time as a very similar article (never
>completely identical for the reasons which I have mentioned) is published
>in another and it can happen that the two journals are published by the
>same publisher. I have known this to happen once in recent years to
>journals I have some responsibility for.
>
>There are various procedures for drawing attention to this similarity once
>it has been discovered (see the NLM site for explanations). Obviously also
>the editors of the journals will tell the person concerned not to submit
>again. I know of no publisher, who has procedures for stopping such a
>duplicate (or almost duplicate) publishing and the reason is quite simple.
>To put all articles accepted through the sort of software that is offered
>would be costly and create a whole new step in the workflow i.e. cause
>some delay.
>
>If the academic community were pressing for publishers to adopt this step,
>publishers would have to listen but they do not and are unlikely to do so.
>These are rare happenings. They are not the norm. The authors discovered
>in this practice are penalised.
>
>If you argue (as I am sure you do not) that publishers are morally obliged
>to prevent this happening, i.e. duplication publication because two
>different journals have accepted more or less the same article, I can say
>little except to point out that libraries regularly buy more than one copy
>of different articles, books or even journals because of the different
>aggregations they subscribe to. I know some librarians (like Chuck) worry
>about this but I cannot see that it is easy to prevent this happening.
>
>To repeat however - this is nothing to do with the publishing practice
>which you have exposed.
>
>Anthony