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On the prevalence and scientific impact of duplicate publications in different scientific fields (1980-2007)

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Abstract

Purpose The issue of duplicate publications has received a lot of attention in the medical literature, but much less in the information science community. This paper aims to analyze the prevalence and scientific impact of duplicate publications across all fields of research between 1980 and 2007. Design/methodology/approach The approach is a bibliometric analysis of duplicate papers based on their metadata. Duplicate papers are defined as papers published in two different journals having: the exact same title; the same first author; and the same number of cited references. Findings In all fields combined, the prevalence of duplicates is one out of 2,000 papers, but is higher in the natural and medical sciences than in the social sciences and humanities. A very high proportion (>85 percent) of these papers are published the same year or one year apart, which suggest that most duplicate papers were submitted simultaneously. Furthermore, duplicate papers are generally published in journals with impact factors below the average of their field and obtain lower citations. Originality/value The paper provides clear evidence that the prevalence of duplicate papers is low and, more importantly, that the scientific impact of such papers is below average.

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... Through the extensive use of text-matching software called eTBLAST, Errami et al. surveyed seven million biomedical abstracts in Medline and discovered tens of thousands of highly similar articles, concluding that scientists are publishing more and more duplicate papers . On the contrary, Larivière and Gingras (2010) claimed that "the prevalence of duplicates is one out of 2,000 papers" and that the phenomenon does not affect all scholarly communities, being typically concentrated in medical science fields (Larivière & Gingras, 2010). Other authoritative scholars argue that ethical misconduct has a marginal effect on the advancement of science (Bar-Ilan & Halevi, 2018) and that salami publishing may not necessarily be a questionable research practice (Happell, 2016), since there could be valid and defensible arguments for a single research study generating multiple publications (Hicks & Berg, 2014). ...
... Through the extensive use of text-matching software called eTBLAST, Errami et al. surveyed seven million biomedical abstracts in Medline and discovered tens of thousands of highly similar articles, concluding that scientists are publishing more and more duplicate papers . On the contrary, Larivière and Gingras (2010) claimed that "the prevalence of duplicates is one out of 2,000 papers" and that the phenomenon does not affect all scholarly communities, being typically concentrated in medical science fields (Larivière & Gingras, 2010). Other authoritative scholars argue that ethical misconduct has a marginal effect on the advancement of science (Bar-Ilan & Halevi, 2018) and that salami publishing may not necessarily be a questionable research practice (Happell, 2016), since there could be valid and defensible arguments for a single research study generating multiple publications (Hicks & Berg, 2014). ...
... 2) The use of very "restrictive" rules on publication metadata: for example, Larivière and Gingras (2010) isolated duplicate papers, defined as those that share the same title, the same first author, and the same number of references. In this way, out of over 18 million articles indexed in the WoS over the 1980-2007 period, they found 4,918 occurrences of duplicate papers published in two different journals. ...
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Purpose This study investigates whether publication-centric incentive systems, introduced through the National Scientific Accreditation (ASN: Abilitazione Scientifica Nazionale) for professorships in Italy in 2012, contribute to adopting “salami publishing” strategies among Italian academics. Design/methodology/approach A longitudinal bibliometric analysis was conducted on the publication records of over 25,000 Italian science professors to examine changes in publication output and the originality of their work following the implementation of the ASN. Findings The analysis revealed a significant increase in publication output after the ASN’s introduction, along with a concurrent decline in the originality of publications. However, no evidence was found linking these trends to increased salami slicing practices among the observed researchers. Research limitations Given the size of our observation field, we propose an innovative indirect approach based on the degree of originality of publications’ bibliographies. We know that bibliographic coupling cannot capture salami publications per se, but only topically-related records. On the other hand, controlling for the author’s specialization level in the period, we believe that a higher level of bibliographic coupling in his scientific output can signal a change in his strategy of disseminating the results of his research. The relatively low R-squared values in our models (0.3-0.4) reflect the complexity of the phenomenon under investigation, revealing the presence of unmeasured factors influencing the outcomes, and future research should explore additional variables or alternative models that might account for a greater proportion of the variability. Despite this limitation, the significant predictors identified in our analysis provide valuable insights into the key factors driving the observed outcomes. Practical implications The results of the study support those who argue that quantitative research assessment frameworks have had very positive effects and should not be dismissed, contrary to the claims of those evoking the occurrence of side effects that do not appear in the empirical analyses. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence on the impact of the ASN on publication behaviors in a huge micro-level dataset, contributing to the broader discourse on the effects of quantitative research assessments on academic publishing practices.
... Errami and Garner (2008) used abstract matching to evaluate 17 million Medline publications and identify an estimated 50,000 cases of duplication. Analysing the metadata of just over 18.6 million articles indexed by the Web of Science, Larivière and Gingras (2010) concluded that approximately 0.05% of them were duplicates. amongst the papers mentioning duplicate publications, there are those that focus on various statistical estimates. ...
... We used the database eLIBRARY.RU ( Eremenko, 2003 andGlukhov, Novikov &Petrov, 2004 ), the largest repository of Russian-language full-text scientific publications, to search for duplicate publications. As a rule, researchers conduct automated identification and analysis of duplicated publications within a selected database, e.g., Web of Science ( Larivière & Gingras, 2010 ), Arxive.org ( Sorokina et al., 2006 ), Medline , PubMed ( Le, Moran, Bezuhly & Hong, 2015 ). ...
... In total, the clusters of duplicated articles included 3.88% of all studied publications. Even if we assume that some of them are not unethical duplication (templated articles, republishing made to expand the audience and with the consent of the publishers), the share of unethical duplication, nevertheless, significantly exceeds the estimate of about 1% of duplicated publications made by Larivière and Gingras (2010) based on a literature review and their own 0.05% score based on metadata analysis in the Web of Science database. We can explain this difference in results by significantly higher levels of peer review and editorial work in the world's leading journals. ...
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The article presents a study of publication ethics violations in Russian-language scientific publications related to the duplicated publication. The aim of the study is to assess the frequency of the above-noted violations in the data of eLIBRARY.RU, the largest aggregator of full texts of Russian-language scientific publications. For the purposes of the study, we used the tools of the “Antiplagiat” plagiarism detection system. Out of the almost 12 million full-text publications on the eLIBRARY.RU platform, more than 3.8 million scientific articles were selected for analysis. The study identified 70 406 cases of duplication of publications. In each of the detected cases, the same – or significantly similar – texts were published two or more (up to 73) times. An analysis of the most significant cases by number of publications is presented along with a detailed discussion of examples of the identified violations. A significant increase in the number and proportion of duplicated publications was identified in the period from 2014 to 2017. Conclusions are presented concerning shortcomings in editorial processes that allow duplication of publications along with the factual impossibility of detecting duplication in cases of simultaneous submission of the manuscript to different journals, the insufficient use by journal editors of means for detecting inappropriate borrowings and the need to retract a significant number of articles in connection with the identified violations.
... Discussions about originality (Figure 15) are concerned with the noteworthiness and importance of new findings (Interrante and Reichmanis 2005;Mueller and Soares 2017). Tangible improvements compared to previous publications and extending available knowledge are considered as necessary requirements of originality, and a prerequisite for publication of new material (Steinbok 1996;Jerrells 2001;Lariviere and Gingras 2010). In contrast, attempts to publish manuscripts that have substantial similarities with previous publications (Amos 2014), massaging data that was used in previous publications to publish a new article (Chanson 2009;Rohwer et al. 2017), or publishing a series of small articles that include very thin slices of information are seen as unethical (Svensson and Andersson 2013;Meyer et al. 2016;Flatt, Blasimme, and Vayena 2017). ...
... Issues pertinent to using the definition of authorship such as notions of substantial contribution, intellectual contribution and authorship order are discussed at great length. Given the importance of authorship credit for tenure and promotion (Lariviere and Gingras 2010;Shapiro, Wenger, and Shapiro 1994) this focus seems reasonable. However, reports about lack of adequate attribution of credit in one context, does not imply that it happens in all publications all the time. ...
Article
The article at hand presents the results of a literature review on the ethical issues related to scientific authorship. These issues are understood as questions and/or concerns about obligations, values or virtues in relation to reporting, authorship and publication of research results. For this purpose, the Web of Science core collection was searched for English resources published between 1945 and 2018, and a total of 324 items were analyzed. Based on the review of the documents, ten ethical themes have been identified, some of which entail several ethical issues. Ranked on the basis of their frequency of occurrence these themes are: 1) attribution, 2) violations of the norms of authorship, 3) bias, 4) responsibility and accountability, 5) authorship order, 6) citations and referencing, 7) definition of authorship, 8) publication strategy, 9) originality, and 10) sanctions. In mapping these themes, the current article explores major ethical issue and provides a critical discussion about the application of codes of conduct, various understandings of culture, and contributing factors to unethical behavior.
... In these cases, the authors take large portions of their previous papers and create an article that is essentially piecemealed from other publications. This phenomenon is not new and in fact a 2010 study by Lariviere and Gingras [17] found that it is mostly prevalent in Engineering, Physics and Clinical Medicine and less so in the Arts and Humanities arena. ...
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This article describes some of the characteristics of retracted articles in Arts and Humanities. A total 129 retracted articles in Arts and Humanities journals were identified using Retraction Watch and Scopus and then analyzed. The analysis shows that the main reasons for retracting Arts and Humanities articles is recycling and plagiarism. The analysis also shows that retracted articles continue to be read, downloaded and cited as well as mentioned in social media channels.
... При прямом копировании отличия между оригинальной и повторной публикациями незначительны -изменено название, аннотация и / или порядок авторов. Хотя распространенность прямого копирования варьируется в зависимости от дисциплины, общая распространенность этой формы самоплагиата относительно низкая [2]. ...
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This article deals with the acute problem of self-plagiarism in academic papers. Authors believe that illegitimate text recycling should be considered as a form of unethical behavior in science. Authors describe various methods of self-plagiarism, which have become widespread in the Russian and foreign publishing practice, and consider the criteria allowing to distinguish legitimate text recycling from self-plagiarism. Authors investigate the problem of the text recycling restrictions depending on the genre of an academic paper in which the text of the author has been used for the first time and the genre of the academic paper in which it has been reused. With the information provided in this paper about operating principles of the Antiplagiat software which detects plagiarism, authors conclude that an expert has to analyze full report from the software so he can assess the use of the identified citations and self-citations.
... 8 Regarding redundant publications, one study estimated the prevalence of duplicates in all research fields to be one in 2,000 papers between 1980 and 2007, clinical medicine being the field with the highest absolute number of duplicates. 9 Integrity in authorship is an additional point of concern. Scientists included as authors without having substantially contributed to the work (honorary/gift authors) or others who get no authorship credit in spite of their substantial contribution (ghost authors) were detected in 21% of published articles in major medical journals. ...
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OBJECTIVE Global literature reflects a growing concern over research misconduct, which has been referred to as a “disease” of modern science. Although intent to deceive is the central aspect of publication misconduct, some cases involving novices might derive from simple ignorance or limited knowledge. This study investigated the level of knowledge regarding the rules and ethics of scientific writing among undergraduate and postgraduate medical students. METHOD A survey was conducted among undergraduate and postgraduate medical students (n=136) by means of a closed questionnaire consisting of 9 questions, 5 of which pertained to students’ views on current publication ethics. A scoring system based on the answers was developed to evaluate the level of knowledge of scientific publishing (minimum 5 – maximum 25). RESULTS The mean score of the respondents was 16.9±2.2 and limited knowledge was noted, specifically concerning redundant publications. Only 16% of the respondents already had publication experience and only 18.5% had been taught about the relevant topics. No significant difference in score was found between undergraduate and postgraduate students nor between those with and those without publications, but those who had been taught about relevant topics had a significantly higher mean score than those who had no relevant teaching (p=0.01). CONCLUSIONS The knowledge of medical students on publication ethics was relatively good, but limited awareness was noted in certain areas. Education on publication ethics is recommended as part of the medical school course, affording this issue the weight it deserves.
... Isto sugere que foram submetidos simultaneamente para mais de uma revista. Os autores identificaram que grande parte desses casos acontece na área médica e um pequeno número na área de ciências sociais (Larivière & Gingras, 2010). ...
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O Comércio Justo, mesmo se tratando de um tema de pesquisa recente, tem ganhado ênfase crescente na agenda de pesquisa. Identifica-se discussões e publicações sobre o tema em eventos, mas nem sempre baseados em uma literatura qualificada. Portanto, já se impõe a necessidade de se compreender a trajetória e fazer um mapeamento para verificar o estado da arte. Nesse sentido, no presente artigo busca-se fazer uma revisão da literatura sobre os artigos da área temática de Comércio Justo. Esse objetivo permite uma contribuição para avançarmos no uso de artigos qualificados sobre o tema, além do resultado em si do estado da arte. Optou-se pelo estudo bibliométrico para se obter uma visão geral e identificar a influência de diferentes revistas. Mesmo que a ideia principal não seja a de ranquear os periódicos, os índices e fatores de impactos principais utilizados nas bases de dados foram verificados, focando-se na sua relevância para a área. As bases de dados analisadas foram: Ebsco, ISI e Scopus. Foram identificados autores e suas origem acadêmica e institucional, afim de identificar a existência de Centros de Referência no assunto. Os resultados destacam Reino Unido e Estados Unidos como principais regiões envolvidas na produção científica sobre Comércio Justo. A autora com mais artigos e a universidade em destaque são americanas. A Revista que mais se destacou foi a Journal of Business Ethics. Observou-se também que mesmo que poucas revistas tenham classificação no qualis, elas apresentam bons indicadores de impacto, sendo consideradas relevantes para a pesquisa acadêmica em administração.
... Although the prevalence of blatant duplicate publications varies across disciplines, its overall prevalence is relatively low (see Larivière & Gingras, 2010) and their impact on the integrity of science is likely minor, particularly in instances when the published papers are truly identical (i.e., same title, abstract, author list). However, other forms of duplication exist and these are often classified with terms such as redundant publication or overlapping publication (see p 148 of Iverson, et al., 2007 for additional descriptive terms). ...
Article
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Because many technical descriptions of scientific processes and phenomena are difficult to paraphrase and because an increasing proportion of contributors to the scientific literature are not sufficiently proficient at writing in English, it is proposed that journal editors re-examine their approaches toward instances of textual reuse (similarity). The plagiarism definition by the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is more suitable than other definitions for dealing with cases of ostensible plagiarism. Editors are strongly encouraged to examine cases of textual reuse in the context of both, the ORI guidance and the offending authors' proficiency in English. Editors should also reconsider making plagiarism determinations based exclusively on text similarity scores reported by plagiarism detection software.
... Interestingly "the duplicate papers are published at the same year or one year apart suggesting both papers were submitted at the simultaneously. Also duplicate papers are generally published in journals with impact factors below the average of their field and obtain lower citations" (Lariviere & Gingras, 2010). This means that duplicate publication is an act to increase the possible dissemination of the work to the specialists of the same fi eld. ...
Article
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Research ethics are mainly of two fields; research integrity and publication ethics. Research misconducts can occur at both areas. Examples of the research integrity violations are falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism; and those of the publication ethics violations are duplicate publication including self-plagiarism, and improper authorship. In this paper, concepts of research misconducts defined in Research Misconduct-related Rules of The Korean Society of Microscopy are explained and discussed.
... Although only a few studies have been published (Neale et al. 2010;Garfield and Welljams-Dorof 1990;Pfeifer and Snodgrass 1990;Lariviere and Gingras 2010), their conclusions are very interesting. Garfield and Welljams-Dorof (1990) suggested that fraudulent papers were less frequently cited than others and that some of these were negative citations to warn about scientific misconduct. ...
Article
Plagiarism is one of the most important current debates among scientific stakeholders. A separate but related issue is the use of authors’ own ideas in different papers (i.e., self-plagiarism). Opinions on this issue are mixed, and there is a lack of consensus. Our goal was to gain deeper insight into plagiarism and self-plagiarism through a citation analysis of documents involved in these situations. The De´ja` vu database, which comprises around 80,000 duplicate records, was used to select 247 pairs of documents that had been examined by curators on a full text basis following a stringent protocol. We then used the Scopus database to perform a citation analysis of the selected documents. For each document pair, we used specific bibliometric indicators, such as the number of authors, full text similarity, journal impact factor, the Eigenfactor, and article influence. Our results confirm that cases of plagiarism are published in journals with lower visibility and thus tend to receive fewer citations. Moreover, full text similarity was significantly higher in cases of plagiarism than in cases of self-plagiarism. Among pairs of documents with shared authors, duplicates not citing the original document showed higher full text similarity than those citing the original document, and also showed greater overlap in the references cited in the two documents.
... One commonly distinguishes in this regard a form of plagiarism where the work, ideas or findings of another person are reproduced without acknowledgement, and a form of self-plagiarism where an author reproduces in a publication significant amount of text he/she has already published elsewhere (see for a further discussion of the latter Roig 2005). A most insidious case of self-plagiarism is when an author knowingly publishes the same paper twice; this is referred to as "duplicate publication" (e.g., Kostoff et al. 2006) but, as a recent study has shown, it appears to remain a relatively scarce phenomenon, particularly in the social sciences and humanities (Lariviere and Gingras 2010). ...
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More recent advancements in digital technologies have significantly alleviated the dissemination of new scientific ideas as well as the storing, searching and retrieval of large amounts of published research findings. While not denying the benefits of this novel ‘economy of memory,’ this paper endeavors to shed light on the ways in which the use of digital technologies may be linked to a distortion of the system of formal publications that facilitates the effective dissemination and collaborative building of scientific knowledge. Through combining three different strands of discussion that are often left separate – those pertaining to the cognitive effects of new technological memory systems, those pertaining to citation and publishing practices, and those regarding the effects of formalizing modes of research governance – it is also shown that this distortion is not merely a consequence of technological developments alone. Rather, such a distortion is inseparable from and potentially aggravated by the spreading of increasingly dysfunctional, formalizing research governance mechanisms. It is argued that these mechanisms run the risk of fostering the proliferation of knowledge practices that are characterized by an increasing degree of superficiality as well as the strategic publication of research that is of a decreasing degree of originality. If left unaddressed, this may pose a serious threat to the efficiency and effectiveness of the formal record of scientific knowledge as a tool for the dissemination of original research. By extension, this may in the long run seriously undermine the capacity of the publicly funded research system more generally.
... Apart from the classic studies attempting to quantify different features of the phenomenon, some empirical studies endeavoured to find its possible causes. In some instances, papers' citation rates were found to be strongly influenced by the reputation of the related journals (Larivière and Gingras, 2010), elite affiliations of their authors (Medoff, 2006), the viability of the links incorporated into them (Brown, 2004), and open accessibility of the journals (Sotudeh and Horri, 2008a, b). Some investigations confirmed the impact of the phenomenon on different entities including regions (Sotudeh, 2004), a single country (Pislyakov and Dyachenko, 2010), and a specific discipline (Tol, 2009). ...
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Purpose The purpose of this study is to attempt to suggest an adjustment in Iran's national publication strategy based on the country‐specific Matthew core journals. It investigates Iran's performance in its national journal set, and proposes a more prominent journal subset. Design/methodology/approach A citation analysis method is applied to study Iran's scientific performance in its national journal set. The data were extracted from the Science Citation Index at Web of Science and JCR and imported to SPSS for further refinement and analysis. Findings The results showed that Iran experienced comparatively considerable citation loss. Surplus citations are concentrated in a small number of journals, presented as Iran's positive Matthew core journals. The results also confirm a relatively poor publication strategy adopted by Iranian scientists and that a publication concentration does not necessarily enhance the chance of being widely cited. Research limitations/implications These findings imply that Iran needs to watch more vigilantly the functioning of its science system. To improve its presence at the international level, Iran should re‐orient its publication strategy towards a more prominent one. This may be the case for similar science systems, where the emphasis is given to quantity rather than quality. Originality/value Country‐specific Matthew core journals, with serious citation competition, can serve as an important criterion to monitor the functioning of science systems regarding publication strategy. This is the first empirical study to employ the concept to suggest improvements in a country's publication strategy.
... We use Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (WoS)—which includes the Science Citation Index Expanded, the Social Sciences Citation Index, and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index—to locate duplicate papers and compare their scientific impact. Previous studies (see, among others, Errami and Garner, 2008; Smith Blancett, Flanagin and Young, 1995; Larivière and Gingras, 2009; Sorokina et al., 2006) have used different definitions of a duplicate paper, from one extreme (the exact same text is republished) to the other (e.g. only part of the data is reused, same data but different conclusions, etc.). ...
Article
Since the publication of Robert K. Merton's theory of cumulative advantage in science (Matthew Effect), several empirical studies have tried to measure its presence at the level of papers, individual researchers, institutions or countries. However, these studies seldom control for the intrinsic "quality" of papers or of researchers--"better" (however defined) papers or researchers could receive higher citation rates because they are indeed of better quality. Using an original method for controlling the intrinsic value of papers--identical duplicate papers published in different journals with different impact factors--this paper shows that the journal in which papers are published have a strong influence on their citation rates, as duplicate papers published in high impact journals obtain, on average, twice as much citations as their identical counterparts published in journals with lower impact factors. The intrinsic value of a paper is thus not the only reason a given paper gets cited or not; there is a specific Matthew effect attached to journals and this gives to paper published there an added value over and above their intrinsic quality. Comment: 7 pages, 2 tables
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Adult male rape, defined as a man sexually assaulting another man, became legally recognized by English law through the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (1994). However, the rate of reporting male rape in England remains low compared to female rape and other nonsexual intimate partner violence. Scholars suggest that the low reporting rate could be partly attributed to the persistence of male rape myths (MRM) in society. For this reason, this article reviews the literature on MRM in England and Wales since 1994. This period is significant as it marks the time when erroneous beliefs began to be recognized as myths. Using a mixed-methods approach within a systematic review framework, we identified, evaluated, and synthesized empirical evidence from 11 studies to address our research question. The thematic synthesis of these studies revealed the persistence of certain MRM in England, often tied to stereotypical gender roles and endorsement of homophobic beliefs. However, the review identified limitations, such as the type of rape the studies focused on and their limited applicability, given that most employed student samples. Future research should explore perceptions of male rape using qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches with professionals, male survivors, and community samples. Additionally, future research should challenge the acceptance of MRM and raise awareness of male rape in England.
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Fragmented or multiple publishing is generally considered negative, as authors may inflate their number of articles through duplicate publications and salami publications. However, there are valid and defensible arguments for a single research study generating multiple publications. The existing literature confirm the existence of fragmented publishing; however, the extent of the phenomenon is questioned. The present study is a large-scale analysis within the health sciences of more than 50,000 studies and the resulting publications. The data allows us to analyze differences across subdisciplines as well as over time. The results show that the majority of the fragmented publications are journal articles. This study also shows that the extent of fragmented publishing is tied to subdisciplines. Increased as well as decreased fragmented publishing are found when we compare across the subdisciplines as the development is tied to subdisciplines. The implications are discussed.
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Mispractice by researchers—plagiarism in particular—is, according to the research evidence enculturated within research groups. We interview a small sample of senior academics with a clean record regarding plagiarism, to investigate what has influenced their practice, and how they in turn influence the research groups and research students that they oversee. Our aim is to understand what strategies enculturate good practice. We point to surprisingly complex interactions between technology and culture.
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Resumo Dúvidas acerca dos critérios de originalidade e ineditismo recorrentemente permeiam o universo dos acadêmicos e pesquisadores da área da Ciência da Informação, evidenciando a necessidade de definição mais apurada desses conceitos. O presente estudo busca contribuir para o esclarecimento, realizando uma análise semântica das diretrizes e normas de publicação aos autores, estipuladas pelos periódicos científicos da área de Ciência da Informação. Palavras-chave originalidade; ineditismo; periódicos científicos; comunicação científica; auto-plágio Abstract Questions about the criteria of originality and novelty repeatedly permeate the universe of scholars and researchers in the field of information science, highlighting the need for more accurate definition of these concepts. This study seeks to contribute to the clarification by performing a semantic analysis of publishing guidelines and standards for authors, stipulated by the scientific journals in the field of information science. Keywords Originality. Ineditism. Scientific journals. Scholarly communication. Self-plagiarism
Chapter
The concept of self-plagiarism has been typically examined as a type of research and/or writing malpractice often associated with forms of publication misconduct, such as duplicate publication and data disaggregation. In these and related transgressions, previously published text, data, or other intellectual materials are misrepresented as new content in subsequent publications. These forms of inappropriate re-use will be explored in the context of traditional publication domains, such as journal articles, as well as in other domains of research and scholarship not often addressed by the existing publication ethics literature. The chapter’s discussion of recycling work is grounded in the notion that authors of scientific and scholarly material enter into an implicit contract with their readers, such that a reader will process this type of content under the assumption that such works are accurate, original to the author, and not previously disseminated. Accuracy in science and in scholarship is always a given. However, as researchers and academics often rely on the work of others, readers must be alerted as to when content (e.g., ideas, text, data) are the authors’ own and when they are derived from others’ work. Similarly, as previously disseminated work is sometimes re-examined, readers must always be informed as to the provenance of such work.
Chapter
The concept of self-plagiarism has been typically examined as a type of research and/or writing malpractice often associated with forms of publication misconduct, such as duplicate publication and data disaggregation. In these and related transgressions, previously published text, data, or other intellectual materials are misrepresented as new content in subsequent publications. These forms of inappropriate reuse will be explored in the context of traditional publication domains, such as journal articles, as well as in other domains of research and scholarship not often addressed by the existing publication ethics literature. The chapter’s discussion of recycling work is grounded in the notion that authors of scientific and scholarly material enter into an implicit contract with their readers, such that a reader will process this type of content under the assumption that such works are accurate, original to the author, and not previously disseminated. Accuracy in science and in scholarship is always a given. However, as researchers and academics often rely on the work of others, readers must be alerted as to when content (e.g., ideas, text, data) are the authors’ own and when they are derived from others’ work. Similarly, as previously disseminated work is sometimes re-examined, readers must always be informed as to the provenance of such work.
Chapter
Researchers are used to being evaluated: publications, hiring, tenure and funding decisions are all based on the evaluation of research. Traditionally, this evaluation relied on judgement of peers but, in the light of limited resources and increased bureaucratization of science, peer review is getting more and more replaced or complemented with bibliometric methods. Central to the introduction of bibliometrics in research evaluation was the creation of the Science Citation Index (SCI) in the 1960s, a citation database initially developed for the retrieval of scientific information. Embedded in this database was the Impact Factor, first used as a tool for the selection of journals to cover in the SCI, which then became a synonym for journal quality and academic prestige. Over the last 10 years, this indicator became powerful enough to influence researchers’ publication patterns in so far as it became one of the most important criteria to select a publication venue. Regardless of its many flaws as a journal metric and its inadequacy as a predictor of citations on the paper level, it became the go-to indicator of research quality and was used and misused by authors, editors, publishers and research policy makers alike. The h-index, introduced as an indicator of both output and impact combined in one simple number, has experienced a similar fate, mainly due to simplicity and availability. Despite their massive use, these measures are too simple to capture the complexity and multiple dimensions of research output and impact. This chapter provides an overview of bibliometric methods, from the development of citation indexing as a tool for information retrieval to its application in research evaluation, and discusses their misuse and effects on researchers’ scholarly communication behavior.
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Es ist anzunehmen, dass nur ein Teil der Plagiate an-gesichts der vielen Zeitschriften und Publikationen auf-gedeckt wird. Durch das Internet ist die Versuchung, Texte für die eigene Veröffentlichung zu kopieren, ge-wiss noch gestiegen. Gleichzeitig ist jedoch auch die Gefahr gestiegen, entdeckt zu werden. Häufigkeit von Plagiaten schwer abschätzbar Im Prinzip lässt sich die Häufigkeit von Plagiaten durch Befragung von Autoren oder durch den Abgleich publi-zierter Artikel, Forschungsanträge oder Bücher ermit-teln. Bei einer anonymen Befragung gaben fast 5 Pro-zent der US-amerikanischen Wissenschaftler an, identi-sche Daten mehrfach veröffentlicht zu haben. Ideen an-derer verkauften 1,4 Prozent als die eigenen, und 1,7 Prozent nutzten vertrauliche Informationen für ihre ei-gene Forschung (3). Diese Zahlen basieren auf einer Erhebung bei mehr als 3 000 Wissenschaftlern aus dem Jahr 2002. Bei der Befragung, mit einer Rücklaufquote von annähernd 50 Prozent, unterschied man Forscher in der Mitte ihrer Karriere von jungen Wissenschaftlern. Erstere publizierten signifikant häufiger vertrauliche Informationen oder bereits veröffentlichte Daten als junge Forscher. Da bei Befragungen erfahrungsgemäß eigenes unerwünschtes Verhalten nicht immer angege-ben wird, kann man aber davon ausgehen, dass es sich um eher konservative Zahlen handelt. Wissenschaftler von der Universität Texas versuch-ten, mit einem Texterkennungsprogramm Plagiatoren auf die Schliche zu kommen. Sie durchforsteten Daten-banken, um gleichlautende Passagen in verschiedenen Dokumenten zu identifizieren. Hierbei ermittelten Er-rami et al., dass 0,04 Prozent von über 60 000 Medline-Abstracts wahrscheinliche Duplikate anderer Autoren waren (4). 1,3 Prozent der Autoren aus dieser Stichpro-be schrieben bei sich selbst ab. Die Duplikate fand man dreimal so häufig in Zeitschriften ohne Impact-Faktor, und sie wurden auch seltener zitiert. Etwa drei Viertel der identifizierten Duplikate hatte Medline mit Hilfe eines hausinternen Algorithmus als für diese Arbeit besonders relevante Artikel identifi-ziert. Diese Zuordnung von Medline nutzten die Auto-ren, um weitere 7 Millionen Abstracts zu analysieren. So konnten Errami und Garner 70 000 sehr ähnliche Zusammenfassungen zuordnen (5). Aufgrund der Er-fahrungen mit der zuvor erwähnten Arbeit schätzen die Wissenschaftler, dass sich hierunter 50 000 echte Du-plikate befinden. Das heißt, dass etwa 0,7 Prozent der eingangs eingeschlossenen Abstracts fragwürdigen Ur-sprungs sind. In Bezug auf die gesamte Datenbank mit A us einem Buch abschreiben, ist ein Plagiat, aus zweien ein Essay, aus dreien eine Dissertation (in Anlehnung an [1]). Diese scherzhafte Definition ver-deutlicht, dass ein Plagiat nicht immer fassbar ist. Das Spektrum reicht von der wörtlichen Übernahme aus be-reits Veröffentlichtem bis zur Aneignung von Hypo -thesen und Argumentationen. Die deutsche Hochschul-rektorenkonferenz definiert Plagiat als "unbefugte Verwertung [geistigen Eigentums] unter Anmaßung der Autorschaft" (2). Dem Rezipienten wird der tatsäch -liche Verfasser mit der Intention verschwiegen, die intellektuelle Leistung anderer als die eigene darzu -stellen. Gelegenheiten zum Abkupfern gibt es viele: zu begutachtende Artikel oder Forschungsanträge, Kon-gressvorträge oder andere Veröffentlichungen. In der Wissenschaft wird Plagiieren als Fehlverhalten be-trachtet, das zur Aberkennung akademischer Titel und beruflicher Positionen führen kann. Man unterscheidet das Autoplagiat, bei dem Passa-gen und Daten aus vorhergehenden eigenen Arbeiten einfließen, vom Fremdplagiat, in dem das intellektuelle Eigentum Anderer ohne deren Nennung verbreitet wird. Umfragen und die persönliche Wahrnehmung deuten darauf hin, dass Autoplagiate wesentlich häufi-ger sind als Fremdplagiate und in gewissem Ausmaß vom wissenschaftlichen Umfeld toleriert werden. Im Gegensatz dazu werden Fremdplagiate einhellig verur-teilt, aber leider nicht immer sanktioniert. GRAFIK Länder mit dem prozentual häu-figsten Anteil an Einträgen in Med-line. In anglopho-nen Ländern wur-den weniger plagi-atverdächtige Arti-kel in Relation zum Medline-Anteil identifiziert, wohin-gegen dies in Arbei-ten aus Japan und China proportional am häufigsten war. Mit freundlicher Ge-nehmigung: Nature Publishing Group, aus Errami M, Gar-ner H: A tale of two citations.
Article
To copy from one book is plagiarism; from two, an essay; from three, a dissertation (1). This light hearted definition illustrates plagiarism’s elusiveness. The spectrum ranges from word-for-word copying of published material to the misappropriation of hypotheses and arguments. The National Association of University Presidents in Germany defines plagiarism as the unauthorized use of intellectual property under the pretense of ownership (2). The originator is concealed from the recipient, with the intention of presenting the intellectual achievements of others as one’s own. Opportunities to plagiarize are widespread and include peer-reviewed articles, research proposals, conference presentations, and other publications. In the world of science, plagiarism is considered misconduct and can lead to loss of academic and professional status. A distinction is made between self-plagiarism, in which passages and data from one’s own previous works reappear, and plagiarism of others’ work, in which the intellectual property of others is used without due reference. Surveys and anecdotal impression suggest that self-plagiarism is much more common than other forms of plagiarism, and is tolerated, to a degree, within the scientific world. Plagiarism of others’ work, on the other hand, is unanimously condemned, although unfortunately not always punished. Given the huge number of journals and publications, it is reasonable to assume that only a small proportion of instances of plagiarism are detected. The Internet has increased the temptation to copy text for use in one’s own publication, but also the risk of being discovered.
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This paper gives an outline of a new bibliometric database based upon all articles published by authors from the Netherlands, and processed during the time period 1980–1993 by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) for theScience Citation Index (SCI),Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) andArts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). The paper describes various types of information added to the database: data on articles citing the Dutch publications; detailed citation data on ISI journals and subfields; and a classification system of publishing main organizations, appearing in the addresses. Moreover, an overview is given of the types of bibliometric indicators that were constructed. Their relationship to indicators developed by other researchers in the field is discussed. Finally, two applications are given in order to illustrate the potentials of the database and of the bibliometric indicators derived from it. The first represents a synthesis of classical macro indicator studies at the one hand, and bibliometric analyses of research groups or institutes at the other. The second application gives for the first time a detailed analysis of a country's publication output per institutional sector.
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Cross-field comparison ofscientometric indicators 1 is severely hindered by the differences in publication and citation habits of science fields. However, relating publication and citation indicators to proper field-specific reference standards,relative indicators can be built, which may prove rather useful in the comparative assessment of scientists, groups, institutions or countries. The use ofrelational charts in displaying the indicators broadens the scope of such assessments. Relative indicators of chemistry research in 25 countries are presented as an illustrative example.
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Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize research findings across studies. Special statistical methods are usually needed for meta-analysis, both because effect-size indexes are typically highly heteroscedastic and because it is desirable to be able to distinguish between-study variance from within-study sampling-error variance. We outline a number of considerations related to choosing methods for the meta-analysis of ecological data, including the choice of parametric vs. resampling methods, reasons for conducting weighted analyses where possible, and comparisons fixed vs. mixed models in categorical and regression-type analyses.
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Study effects developed from the same data set and duplicated in more than one publication likely will bias the aggregated effects in a meta-analysis. This threat to the validity of meta-analyses in organizational research is significant. Methods of detecting overt and covert duplication of publication are presented through an analysis of five published meta-analyses. An unpublished meta-analysis of salesperson turnover is used to present the implications of nonindependence. Options for the correction of duplication are discussed. It is recommended that study effects gathered during the literature search use the proposed screening heuristic to detect and address duplicate study effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Organizational Research Methods is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
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In the scientific research community, plagiarism and covert multiple publications of the same data are considered unacceptable because they undermine the public confidence in the scientific integrity. Yet, little has been done to help authors and editors to identify highly similar citations, which sometimes may represent cases of unethical duplication. For this reason, we have made available Déjà vu, a publicly available database of highly similar Medline citations identified by the text similarity search engine eTBLAST. Following manual verification, highly similar citation pairs are classified into various categories ranging from duplicates with different authors to sanctioned duplicates. Déjà vu records also contain user-provided commentary and supporting information to substantiate each document's categorization. Déjà vu and eTBLAST are available to authors, editors, reviewers, ethicists and sociologists to study, intercept, annotate and deter questionable publication practices. These tools are part of a sustained effort to enhance the quality of Medline as ‘the’ biomedical corpus. The Déjà vu database is freely accessible at http://spore.swmed.edu/dejavu. The tool eTBLAST is also freely available at http://etblast.org.
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To quantify the impact of duplicate data on estimates of efficacy. Systematic search for published full reports of randomised controlled trials investigating ondansetron's effect on postoperative emesis. Abstracts were not considered. Eighty four trials (11,980 patients receiving ondansetron) published between 1991 and September 1996. Percentage of duplicated trials and patient data. Estimation of antiemetic efficacy (prevention of emesis) of the most duplicated ondansetron regimen. Comparison between the efficacy of non-duplicated and duplicated data. Data from nine trials had been published in 14 further reports, duplicating data from 3335 patients receiving ondansetron; none used a clear cross reference. Intravenous ondansetron 4 mg versus placebo was investigated in 16 reports not subject to duplicate publication, three reports subject to duplicate publication, and six duplicates of those three reports. The number needed to treat to prevent vomiting within 24 hours was 9.5 (95% confidence interval 6.9 to 15) in the 16 non-duplicated reports and 3.9 (3.3 to 4.8) in the three reports which were duplicated (P < 0.00001). When these 19 were combined the number needed to treat was 6.4 (5.3 to 7.9). When all original and duplicate reports were combined (n = 25) the apparent number needed to treat improved to 4.9 (4.4 to 5.6). By searching systematically we found 17% of published full reports of randomised trials and 28% of the patient data were duplicated. Trials reporting greater treatment effect were significantly more likely to be duplicated. Inclusion of duplicated data in meta-analysis led to a 23% overestimation of ondansetron's antiemetic efficacy.
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In 2005, the acceptance rate for renal replacement therapy (RRT) in adults in the UK was 108 per million population (pmp). This was derived from complete data for adults in the UK, as data were obtained separately from the five English renal units not currently returning to the Registry. In addition, 87 children started RRT (see Chapter 13) giving a total incidence of 110 pmp. From 2001 to 2005 there has been an 7.3% rise in the acceptance numbers in those 42 renal units with full reporting throughout that period. In the UK, for adults in 2005, the crude acceptance rates in Local Authorities (LA) varied from 0 (in two very small LA areas in Scotland and Northern Ireland) to 271 pmp; the standardized rate ratios for acceptance varied from 0 to 2.76. Excluding the two areas with null returns, 20 areas had significantly low ratios, all of them in England. Thirty had significantly high ratios, seven in Northern Ireland, four in Scotland, three in Wales and seven in London. Over the period 2001–2005, 25 areas had a significantly low standardized acceptance rate; 24 in England and one in Scotland. All except one of these had ethnic minority populations of <10%. Thirty-seven had high standardized acceptance rates, seven in Scotland where ethnicity data were not available, 14 from areas with ethnic minority populations in excess of 10%, and 12 were in Wales or the Southwest of England. The median age of patients starting RRT in England has increased from 63.8 years in 1998 to 65.2 years in 2005. The median age of incident non-White patients is significantly lower at 56.8 years. In England, the acceptance rate is highest in the 75–79 age band at 408 pmp, as in Scotland at 580 pmp; in Wales the peak is in the 80–84 age band at 525 pmp, as in Northern Ireland with a rate of 825 pmp. Diabetic renal disease (20%) remains the most common specific primary renal disease. There was a significant positive correlation between the percentage of incident RRT patients with diabetic renal disease and the percentage of non-Whites in the incident cohort. Haemodialysis (HD) was the first modality of RRT in 76% of patients, peritoneal dialysis (PD) in 21% and pre-emptive transplant in 3%. In 1998, the proportion whose first modality was HD was 58% and this continues to increase. By day 90, 8% had died, a further 1% had stopped treatment or been transferred out leaving 91% of the original cohort on RRT. Of these, 71% were on HD, 26% on PD and 3% had received a transplant. Data on first referral to a nephrologist were available from 22 centres for the period 2000–2005 (for a total of 5611 patients and 59 centre-years). In 2005, the mean percentage of patients referred late (<90 days before dialysis initiation) was 30% (centre range 13–48%). This was similar to the value in 2000. Patients referred late were older, a higher proportion of them were male, a lower proportion non-White, and a lower proportion with no recorded comorbidity. Patients with polycystic kidney disease and diabetic nephropathy tended to be referred early compared with the whole incident cohort and those with uncertain aetiology and no recorded diagnosis referred late. Estimated GFR (eGFR) at the start of RRT appears to be higher in older than younger patients. eGFR is significantly lower in those referred late compared with those referred earlier and this is especially marked in the older patients. The geometric mean eGFR of all patients starting RRT rose from 6 in 1997 to above 7.5 in 2003, since when it has remained stable.
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Duplicate publication impacts the quality of the scientific corpus, has been difficult to detect, and studies this far have been limited in scope and size. Using text similarity searches, we were able to identify signatures of duplicate citations among a body of abstracts. A sample of 62,213 Medline citations was examined and a database of manually verified duplicate citations was created to study author publication behavior. We found that 0.04% of the citations with no shared authors were highly similar and are thus potential cases of plagiarism. 1.35% with shared authors were sufficiently similar to be considered a duplicate. Extrapolating, this would correspond to 3500 and 117,500 duplicate citations in total, respectively. eTBLAST, an automated citation matching tool, and Déjà vu, the duplicate citation database, are freely available at http://invention.swmed.edu/ and http://spore.swmed.edu/dejavu
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The reward and communication systems of science are considered.
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Scitation is the online home of leading journals and conference proceedings from AIP Publishing and AIP Member Societies
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It is unethical to republish a journal article without citing the original source. Simple keyword searching of Emerald (formerly known as MCB University Press) online journals from the publisher's web site has identified 409 examples of articles from sixty-seven journals that were republished without such notification from 1989 through 2003. Many of these articles were published simultaneously in journals within the same or similar subject disciplines. Five examples of triple publication were identified. In several cases, neither the editor nor editorial board members reported knowledge of this practice. This article will review the conditions of acceptable republishing plus document and provide examples of republication. It will discuss implications on the publication of record, and question whether this is a case of "let the buyer beware".
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The intuitive background for measures of structural centrality in social networks is reviewed and existing measures are evaluated in terms of their consistency with intuitions and their interpretability.Three distinct intuitive conceptions of centrality are uncovered and existing measures are refined to embody these conceptions. Three measures are developed for each concept, one absolute and one relative measure of the centrality of positions in a network, and one reflecting the degree of centralization of the entire network. The implications of these measures for the experimental study of small groups is examined.
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Despite a very large number of studies on the aging and obsolescence of scientific literature, no study has yet measured, over a very long time period, the changes in the rates at which scientific literature becomes obsolete. This article studies the evolution of the aging phenomenon and, in particular, how the age of cited literature has changed over more than 100 years of scientific activity. It shows that the average and median ages of cited literature have undergone several changes over the period. Specifically, both World War I and World War II had the effect of significantly increasing the age of the cited literature. The major finding of this article is that contrary to a widely held belief, the age of cited material has risen continuously since the mid-1960s. In other words, during that period, researchers were relying on an increasingly old body of literature. Our data suggest that this phenomenon is a direct response to the steady-state dynamics of modern science that followed its exponential growth; however, we also have observed that online preprint archives such as arXiv have had the opposite effect in some subfields. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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This paper examines the genesis of journal impact measures and how their evolution culminated in the journal impact factor (JIF) produced by the Institute for Scientific Information. The paper shows how the various building blocks of the dominant JIF (published in the Journal Citation Report - JCR) came into being. The paper argues that these building blocks were all constructed fairly arbitrarily or for different purposes than those that govern the contemporary use of the JIF. The results are a faulty method, widely open to manipulation by journal editors and misuse by uncritical parties. The discussion examines some solution offered to the bibliometrics and scientific communities considering the wide use of this indicator at present.
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Meta-analysis is the use of statistical methods to summarize research findings across studies. Special statistical methods are usually needed for meta-analysis, both because effect-size indexes are typically highly heteroscedastic and because it is desirable to be able to distinguish between-study variance from within-study sampling-error variance. We outline a number of considerations related to choosing methods for the meta-analysis of ecological data, including the choice of parametric vs. resampling methods, reasons for conducting weighted analyses where possible, and comparisons fixed vs. mixed models in categorical and regression-type analyses.
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Thomas S. Kuhn's classic book is now available with a new index. "A landmark in intellectual history which has attracted attention far beyond its own immediate field. . . . It is written with a combination of depth and clarity that make it an almost unbroken series of aphorisms. . . . Kuhn does not permit truth to be a criterion of scientific theories, he would presumably not claim his own theory to be true. But if causing a revolution is the hallmark of a superior paradigm, [this book] has been a resounding success." —Nicholas Wade, Science "Perhaps the best explanation of [the] process of discovery." —William Erwin Thompson, New York Times Book Review "Occasionally there emerges a book which has an influence far beyond its originally intended audience. . . . Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions . . . has clearly emerged as just such a work." —Ron Johnston, Times Higher Education Supplement "Among the most influential academic books in this century." —Choice One of "The Hundred Most Influential Books Since the Second World War," Times Literary Supplement
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"The exploration of the social conditions that facilitate or retard the search for scientific knowledge has been the major theme of Robert K. Merton's work for forty years. This collection of papers [is] a fascinating overview of this sustained inquiry. . . . There are very few other books in sociology . . . with such meticulous scholarship, or so elegant a style. This collection of papers is, and is likely to remain for a long time, one of the most important books in sociology."—Joseph Ben-David, New York Times Book Review "The novelty of the approach, the erudition and elegance, and the unusual breadth of vision make this volume one of the most important contributions to sociology in general and to the sociology of science in particular. . . . Merton's Sociology of Science is a magisterial summary of the field."—Yehuda Elkana, American Journal of Sociology "Merton's work provides a rich feast for any scientist concerned for a genuine understanding of his own professional self. And Merton's industry, integrity, and humility are permanent witnesses to that ethos which he has done so much to define and support."—J. R. Ravetz, American Scientist "The essays not only exhibit a diverse and penetrating analysis and a deal of historical and contemporary examples, with concrete numerical data, but also make genuinely good reading because of the wit, the liveliness and the rich learning with which Merton writes."—Philip Morrison, Scientific American "Merton's impact on sociology as a whole has been large, and his impact on the sociology of science has been so momentous that the title of the book is apt, because Merton's writings represent modern sociology of science more than any other single writer."—Richard McClintock, Contemporary Sociology
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Journal articles constitute the core documents for the diffusion of knowledge in the natural sciences. It has been argued that the same is not true for the social sciences and humanities where knowledge is more often disseminated in monographs that are not indexed in the journal-based databases used for bibliometric analysis. Previous studies have made only partial assessments of the role played by both serials and other types of literature. The importance of journal literature in the various scientific fields has therefore not been systematically characterized. The authors address this issue by providing a systematic measurement of the role played by journal literature in the building of knowledge in both the natural sciences and engineering and the social sciences and humanities. Using citation data from the CD-ROM versions of the Science Citation Index (SCI), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) databases from 1981 to 2000 (Thomson ISI, Philadelphia, PA), the authors quantify the share of citations to both serials and other types of literature. Variations in time and between fields are also analyzed. The results show that journal literature is increasingly important in the natural and social sciences, but that its role in the humanities is stagnant and has even tended to diminish slightly in the 1990s. Journal literature accounts for less than 50% of the citations in several disciplines of the social sciences and humanities; hence, special care should be used when using bibliometric indicators that rely only on journal literature.
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Documenting reactions from authors and journal editors to plagiarism may help others address the problem.
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THE Journal has long had a policy, known as the Ingelfinger Rule, of considering a manuscript for publication only if its substance has not been submitted or reported elsewhere. This policy was promulgated in 1969 by the editor, Franz J. Ingelfinger,1 to protect the Journal from publishing material that had already been published and thus had lost its originality. The policy was maintained by Ingelfinger's successor, Arnold S. Relman,2 , 3 who saw it as a way to discourage the public announcement of research findings before publication in a scientific journal, as well as to discourage the growing practice of redundant publication. . . .
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This account of the Matthew effect is another small exercise in the psychosociological analysis of the workings of science as a social institution. The initial problem is transformed by a shift in theoretical perspective. As originally identified, the Matthew effect was construed in terms of enhancement of the position of already eminent scientists who are given disproportionate credit in cases of collaboration or of independent multiple discoveries. Its significance was thus confined to its implications for the reward system of science. By shifting the angle of vision, we note other possible kinds of consequences, this time for the communication system of science. The Matthew effect may serve to heighten the visibility of contributions to science by scientists of acknowledged standing and to reduce the visibility of contributions by authors who are less well known. We examine the psychosocial conditions and mechanisms underlying this effect and find a correlation between the redundancy function of multiple discoveries and the focalizing function of eminent men of science-a function which is reinforced by the great value these men place upon finding basic problems and by their self-assurance. This self-assurance, which is partly inherent, partly the result of experiences and associations in creative scientific environments, and partly a result of later social validation of their position, encourages them to search out risky but important problems and to highlight the results of their inquiry. A macrosocial version of the Matthew principle is apparently involved in those processes of social selection that currently lead to the concentration of scientific resources and talent (50).
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The purpose of this study was to identify examples of duplicate publication in the nursing literature and determine what types of duplicate articles are published. From the sample of 642 articles published by 77 authors during a 5-year period, 181 articles were classified as duplicate. Forty-one authors published at least one form of duplicate article. Fifty-nine duplicate articles did not reference the primary article. Duplicate publication itself is not unethical, but duplicate publication without referencing duplicate work is unethical and may violate copyright law.
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This study establishes the approximate prevalence and patterns of duplicate publication in the medical literature in the specialty of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery. All of the authors and articles published in the American Medical Association Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery were identified and listed for an 8-year period. During this time, 1965 authors published 1082 articles in the Archives, and this same set of authors published a total of almost 50,000 articles during the 12-year period between January 1977 and December 1988. Of the same set of 1965 authors, we picked 1000 at random and found that they had published a total of 24,353 articles. The titles of these articles were then screened for similar titles, and when similarities were noted, the complete articles were obtained when possible and compared for the degree and pattern of duplicate publication. Of the 1000 authors studied, we found that 228 authors had published 938 articles with similar titles. We were able to obtain the full copy of 886 (94%) of the 938 articles in question, which were written by 226 (99%) of the 228 authors. We found that in the case of 25 authors, there was no duplication despite the similar titles, but in the case of 201 (20% of the 1000) authors, 644 articles were published with some degree of duplication (1.8% duplication rate). The most common duplicate publication involves sequential publication of very similar data and conclusions. Duplicate publications failed to reference prior articles by the same author 32% of the time or referenced the prior articles only partially (11% of the time). Artificial segmentation of a single study into multiple arbitrary segments composed 20% of the duplicate publication. Duplicate publication across different specialties was noted to account for 4% of the instances. Most of the authors duplicated only once or twice, and most duplicators do reference their prior publications. Duplicate publication is an example of inappropriate academic conduct. Because it tarnishes the reputation of the duplicating author and represents an unfair practice in terms of displacing the work of others, efforts should continue to educate authors, particularly young academicians, to avoid the practice of duplicate publication.
Article
A duplicate publication duplicates other published work by the same author(s). The purpose of the study was to define the extent of this problem within the otolaryngology literature. Retrospective review of the literature. Original articles published in Archives of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Laryngoscope in 1999 were reviewed using the OVID search engine. Titles and abstracts from English articles written by the same first, second, or last author were analyzed, and suspected publications were evaluated. Duplicate publications were classified as dual (identical data set and conclusions) or suspected dual (nearly identical data set and conclusions) publications. Of the 492 articles evaluated, 40 index articles were identified. These led to a total of 42 (8.5%) duplicate articles of which 27 were classified as dual and 15 as suspected dual publications. Approximately half of the duplicate publications were published by authors in the United States (55%). Duplicate articles usually appeared within 12 months of the each other (74%) and failed to cross-reference the earlier publication (83%). Journal editors have become aware of an increase in the number of duplicate publications in the medical literature. The incidence of duplicate publications in the otolaryngology literature appears to be similar to that in other specialties.
Article
Duplicate publication is publication of an article that overlaps substantially with an article published elsewhere. Patterns of duplication are not well understood. To investigate duplication patterns and propose a decision tree for classification. We searched a comprehensive list of systematic reviews (1989 through August 15, 2002) in anesthesia and analgesia that is accessible on the Internet. We selected published full articles of duplicates that had been identified in these systematic reviews. Abstracts, letters, or book chapters were excluded. Authors of 56 (40%) of 141 systematic reviews acknowledged identification of duplicates. Duplication patterns were identified independently by all investigators comparing samples and outcomes of pairs of duplicates and main articles. Information on cross-reference, sponsorship, authorship, and publication characteristics was extracted from the articles. The 56 systematic reviews included 1131 main articles (129 337 subjects) and excluded 103 duplicates (12 589 subjects) that originated from 78 main articles. Sixty articles were published twice, 13 three times, 3 four times, and 2 five times. We identified 6 duplication patterns: (1A) identical samples and identical outcomes (21 pairs); (1B) same as 1A but several duplicates assembled (n = 16); (2) identical samples and different outcomes (n = 24); (3A) increasing sample and identical outcomes (n = 11); (3B) decreasing sample and identical outcomes (n = 11); (4) different samples and different outcomes (n = 20). The prevalence of covert duplicate articles (without a cross-reference to the main article) was 5.3% (65/1234). Of the duplicates, 34 (33%) were sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, and 66 (64%) had authorship that differed partly or completely from the main article. The median journal impact factor was 1.8 (range, 0.1-29.5) for duplicates and 2.0 (range, 0.4-29.5) for main articles (P =.13). The median annual citation rate was 1.7 (range, 0-27) for duplicates and 2.1 (range, 0-31) for main articles (P =.45). The median number of authors was 4 (range, 1-14) for duplicates and 4 (range, 1-15) for corresponding main articles (P =.02). The median delay in publication between main articles and duplicates was 1 year (range, 0-7 years). Duplication goes beyond simple copying. Six distinct duplication patterns were identified after comparing study samples and outcomes of duplicates and corresponding main articles. Authorship was an unreliable criterion. Duplicates were published in journals with similar impact factors and were cited as frequently as main articles.
Article
The number of scientific publications is often used to measure scientific achievement. This practice can motivate unethical conduct, such as redundant or duplicate publications, defined as publication of the same scientific contents in more than 1 journal. The aim of this study was to estimate the amount of redundant publications in ophthalmologic journals. Retrospective analysis of published literature. We developed an electronic search engine for redundancies to estimate the amount of duplicate publications in scientific journals. When redundancies reached a given degree (matching score), the articles were screened manually based on authors, titles, and abstracts. We applied this method to the 22 433 articles that were published between 1997 and 2000 in 70 ophthalmologic journals indexed by MEDLINE. The number of duplicate publications with a matching score of 0.6 or more, the number of involved journals, and the number of authors. Redundancies reached a matching score of 0.6 or more in 13 967 pairs of articles. Out of them, a sample of 2210 was reviewed manually. We found 60 redundant articles and estimated that 1.39% of the publications were redundant. Thirty-two journals and an estimate of 1092 authors were involved. In 5% of cases, the scientific conclusions were modified. Because of the restrictive selection process, the impracticability of detecting all redundant publications, and the estimated amount of duplicates increases with lower matching scores, we regard our estimate to be the tip of the iceberg. Duplicate publications have several negative impacts, but neither peer reviewers nor editors can protect their journal from them completely. Several deterrents for duplicate publications are possible, but as long as publications remain the central requirement for academic advancement, a solution seems unlikely. Nevertheless, it is the responsibility of all those who care about objective research and evidence-based medicine to address this problem-not only in ophthalmology.
Article
The practice of duplicate publication has been condemned widely in the scientific community and several studies have been conducted to establish the level of the problem in various surgical fields. A retrospective review of original articles from the British Journal of Plastic Surgery and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery during 2000 was conducted, using Medline (PubMed). A total of 431 abstracts were screened, from which 27 index articles related to 33 ‘suspected redundant’ publications. Further evaluation was carried out by comparing the full text versions of these articles and assigning a grade of non-dual, dual, potentially dual and ‘salami-slicing’. Only four suspect articles were confirmed as having some degree of redundancy, and these related to three index articles (3/431, <1%). The incidence of duplication in plastic surgery literature seems to be much lower compared to other surgical specialties, providing reassurance for reviewers, editors and readers of these journals.
Article
Are scientists publishing more duplicate papers? An automated search of seven million biomedical abstracts suggests that they are, report Mounir Errami and Harold Garner.
Article
The academic scientific enterprise rewards those with the longest CVs and the most publications. Under pressure to generate voluminous output, scientists often fall prey to double publishing, self plagiarism, and submitting the "minimal publishable unit." Are these ethical gray areas, or true transgressions?
Article
We describe a large-scale application of methods for finding plagiarism in research document collections. The methods are applied to a collection of 284,834 documents collected by arXiv.org over a 14 year period, covering a few different research disciplines. The methodology efficiently detects a variety of problematic author behaviors, and heuristics are developed to reduce the number of false positives. The methods are also efficient enough to implement as a real-time submission screen for a collection many times larger.
Definition of sole contribution”
  • F J Ingelfinger
Prometeus Bound: Science in a Dynamic Steady State
  • J.M. Ziman
Déjà vu—A study of duplicate citations in MedlineDéjà vu: A database of highly similar citations in the scientific literature
  • M Errami
  • J M Hicks
  • W Fisher
  • D Trusty
  • J D Wren
  • T C Long
  • H R Garner
Errami, M., Hicks, J.M., Fisher, W., Trusty, D., Wren, J.D., Long, T.C. and Garner, H.R. (2008), “Déjà vu—A study of duplicate citations in Medline”, Bioinformatics, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 243-249. r12 Errami, M., Sun, Z., Long, T.C., George, A.C. and Garner, H.R. (2009), “Déjà vu: A database of highly similar citations in the scientific literature”, Nucleic Acids Research, Vol. 37 Suppl. 1, pp. D921-D924