Sometimes, studies are so nice, you want to print them twice. But when that happens three times within a year, well, maybe it’s not so nice. Consider the following three retractions, which appeared on a single page of Haematologica last month.
One:
The Haematologica Production Office erroneously double-published the article entitled “P39/Tsugane cells are a false cell line contaminated with HL-60 cells and are not suitable for mechanistic studies in myelodysplastic syndromes” by David P. Steensma. Haematologica. 2010 Feb 23. [Epub ahead of print] with doi:10.3324/haematol.2009.022988 . This article must therefore be considered as retracted, as the correct version of the same article has been correctly published on July 1, 2010, as doi:10.3324/haematol.2010.022988. Haematologica sincerely apologizes to the authors and the readers for this mistake.
Two:
The Haematologica Production Office erroneously double-published the article entitled “CKS1B nuclear expression is inversely correlated with p27Kip1 expression and is predictive of an adverse survival in multiple myeloma” by Hong Chang, Nan Jiang, Hua Jiang, Manujendra N. Saha, Connie Qi, Wei Xu, and Donna Reece. Haematologica. 2010 Apr 7th. [Epub ahead of print] with doi:10.3324/haematol.2009.022210. This article must therefore be considered as retracted, as the correct version of the same article has been correctly published on April 26th, 2010, as doi:10.3324/haematol.2010.022210.
Haematologica sincerely apologizes to the authors and the readers for this mistake.
The Haematologica Production Office erroneously double-published the article entitled “Expanded and highly active proliferation centers identify a histological subtype of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (“accelerated” chronic lymphocytic leukemia) with aggressive clinical behavior” by Eva Gine’, Antonio Martinez, Neus Villamor, Armando Lopez-Guillermo, Mireia Camos, Daniel Martinez, Jordi Esteve, Xavier Calvo, Ana Muntañola, Pau Abrisqueta, Maria Rozman, Ciril Rozman, Francesc Bosch, Elias Campo, and Emili Montserrat. Haematologica. 2010 Apr 7. [Epub ahead of print] with doi:10.3324/haematol.2009.022277. This article must therefore be considered as retracted, as the correct version of the same article has been correctly published on April 26th, 2010, with doi:10.3324/haematol.2010.022277.
Haematologica sincerely apologizes to the authors and the readers for this mistake.
We weren’t quite sure what to make of these, so we contacted the journal’s editor a few weeks ago. We’ll update if we hear back. See update at end.
This happened recently to a psychiatry journal, but they only double-published one paper this year, as far as we know.
Here’s hoping the retractions aren’t double-published too.
Update, 11:00 Eastern, 10/14/10: Journal editor Mario Cazzola responded earlier today:
These were mistakes made by our production office. They used a wrong DOI at the time of E-publishing ahead of print, and then had to make a retraction in order to replace the wrong DOI with the correct one at the time of publication in a regular issue.
I suggested not to use the term “Retraction” but rather “Erratum”, but HighWire said it was not possible.
We indeed had internal problems that I hope are solved now.