Archives of Trauma Research has retracted a 2014 paper on bullying by a group in Iran who appear to have been double-fisted in their approach to publishing.
The article, “Epidemiological Pattern of Bullying Among School Children in Mazandaran Province, Iran,” was written by researchers from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, in Tehran. Its conclusions:
Different forms of bullying have a distinct nature and the epidemiological pattern indicates that bullying exists in the Iranian schools. Thus, the effective bullying prevention and appropriate intervention programs are recommended.
Here’s the notice:
The paper titled “Epidemiological Pattern of Bullying Among School Children in Mazandaran Province, Iran” (1), published in Archives of Trauma Research, has been retracted by the journal editorial board, as it is found to be a duplicate publication from the published paper titled “Epidemiological Pattern of Bullying among School Children in Mazandaran Province-Iran” by the same authors, published in Journal of Child and Adolescent Behaviour in June 2014.
The decision has been made based on the COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics) rules by the Kowsar Publication Ethics Committee.
We heard from corresponding author Hamid Soori, who told us the duplication was a “mistake”:
The duplication was due to a mistake and we apologise for it. Actually a full text of the paper was submitted to a scientific meeting and we did not know that it could be published in a journal.
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Enough with the silly wordplay in the titles.
This is largely a matter of taste, but I do worry that your choice of which retractions to cover will be influenced by the potential for such attempts at cleverness.