Chronicle of Higher Ed

["Hamaker, Chuck" <cahamake@email.uncc.edu>]

Monday, November 22, 2004

Publisher Ran Identical Articles in Multiple Journals Without
Acknowledgment, Librarian Finds
By SCOTT CARLSON
http://chronicle.com/free/2004/11/2004112205n.htm

A librarian at Cornell University has discovered that a major
scholarly-journal company, Emerald, has often published the same article
in multiple journals without noting that the material had already appeared
elsewhere.
 ..

Officials at Emerald do not entirely dispute Mr. Davis's findings,
and they say that the failure to note the republications was a flaw in
their production process -- a fault that has been fixed.

A statement from the company says that, from 1989 to 2000, when Emerald
operated under the name MCB University Press, articles of "particular
merit" were occasionally republished. Previously published articles were
also used to buttress journal titles that the company had acquired from
other publishers and that were behind in their publishing schedules. Dual
publication since 2001 has been rare and accidental, the statement says.

...

"We're not trying to rubbish the work that Phil Davis has done," says
Kathryn Toledano, the company's director of business development.
Republishing an article without acknowledgment "was something that we did,
but it wasn't a business practice.

"There were occasions, and they are very few, when an article was
republished," she says. "What we failed to do, but inconsistently, was
attribute where the article had been originally published." 
... 

Librarians and academics contacted by The Chronicle had varied responses
to Mr. Davis's findings, but most viewed Emerald's explanations with
skepticism.

Bernie Sloan, a senior library and information-systems consultant for the
University of Illinois system, was the author of one of the republished
articles. He recalls that Emerald contacted him for permission to
republish the article, which he granted.

"The interesting thing is that they stopped [republishing] at a certain
point," he says, "so to me that means that they thought that there was
something not quite kosher about it."

Margaret Landesman, the head of collection development at the University
of Utah's library, says that many librarians thought MCB University Press
charged too much for its journals. Mr. Davis's research further harms the
company's reputation among librarians, she says.

"It's absolutely unethical," she says. "If something like this were to
happen with a publisher that has had a sterling reputation, then it is my
belief that we are inclined to think that they had a glitch and that it
wouldn't happen again." But with Emerald, "it does not seem out of
character."

...I get the impression that some of the comments from librarians about
Emerald reflect longstanding frustration," says Rick Anderson, director
of resource acquisition at the University of Nevada at Reno. While
Emerald's actions were wrong, he says, "that doesn't mean that we need
to surround them with pitchforks.
...

However, Mr. Anderson thinks Mr. Davis's findings should lead librarians
and researchers to conduct broader studies of republication among
commercial journals. "The matter here is principle, and if a hundred
publishers are doing this, that's a different equation," he says. "It
would be useful to know if this is an aberration or a more widespread
practice than we thought."

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Copyright (c) 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
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