Re: OA as provision against salami and double publishing

[Phil Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

Joachim.Meier wrote, "Well organized OA could be an efficient 
provision against salami publishing and double publishing."

Really?

Several years ago I released the details of a highly-organized, 
republishing practice of a medium-sized publisher who had been 
republishing articles without attribution in at least 73 of its 
journals between 1975 and 2003 [1, 2]. The evidence for this came 
not from Open Access, as this publisher does not publish OA 
journals, but from simple manual searching of their journal 
database, which indicated hundreds of identical titles and 
abstracts among its publications.

It is very difficult to believe that I was the first to spot 
republication. Even before this publisher produced its own 
web-searchable database, many of their journals were indexed in 
Library Literature, LISA, ABI/Inform, and by other abstracting 
services. Conscientious librarians and researchers must have 
spotted republication in the process of doing literature reviews 
since no effort to obscure the title or abstract were undertaken 
by the publisher. Triplicate publication (see example 1) would 
have stood out like a sore thumb to anyone serious about ethical 
practices of publishing. Even more amazing were articles 
republished in the *same journal* after only a short period of 
time, in example 2 below, only months apart.

Why do we become shocked to discover that duplicate publication 
has even soiled the pages of Nature and other top-tier journals? 
My only explanation is that we are dealing with ethical standards 
that are applied so unevenly across the academic literature. We 
trust the leading journals and hold them to a higher standard 
because their editorial boards take such care in trying to 
prevent fraud and abuse.

The kind of massive and systematic republishing that I documented 
[1, 2] simply could not have taken place in the pages of 
prestigious journals. It could only have taken place in journals 
that people neither read nor care about, and Open Access to this 
publisher's content would not have made a whiff of difference in 
preventing it from happening. The incentive to republish was too 
strong, and the consequences for being caught simply too weak.

Example 1.

"A Cost-effectiveness Study of Changing Medical Practise in Early 
Pregnancy," Journal of Management in Medicine 11 no.6 (1997): 
372-381

and again as:

"A Cost-effectiveness Study of Changing Medical Practise in Early 
Pregnancy," Clinical Performance in Quality Healthcare 7 no.4 
(1999): 172-177

and a third time as:

"A Cost-effectiveness Study of Changing Medical Practise in Early 
Pregnancy," British Journal of Clinical Governance 4 no.4 (1999): 
148-154

Example 2.

"Inequality between Genders in the Executive Suite in Corporate America:
Moral and Ethical Issues." Equal Opportunities International 22, no. 8
(2003): 1-19.

and less than one year later in the same journal as:

"Inequality between Genders in the Executive Suite in Corporate America:
Moral and Ethical Issues." Equal Opportunities International 22, no. 2
(2003): 40-58.


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

--
Philip M. Davis
PhD Student
Department of Communication
336 Kennedy Hall
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853
email: pmd8@cornell.edu
phone: 607 255-4735
https://confluence.cornell.edu/display/~pmd8/resume