Smoking cessation paper pulled for “almost word-for-word” similarity to authors’ previous work

The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine has retracted a 2008 article on smoking cessation by a group from Sweden which they had published not many months before in a different journal.

The retracted paper was titled “Quitting smoking is perceived to have an effect on somatic health among pregnant and non-pregnant women.” The authors, from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, had published a similar paper — “Perception of Smoking-Related Health Consequences among Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women” — in the American Journal of Addictions in 2007.

How similar?

Here’s what the retraction notice has to say (link to PDF):

The Editors and Publisher would like to inform the readers the following article has been retracted from publication in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine: Ortendahl M, Näsman P. Quitting smoking is perceived to have an effect on somatic health among pregnant and non-pregnant women. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med. 2008;21:239–246. (doi:10.1080/14767050801924829).

This article has been found to reproduce content to a high degree of similarity, without appropriate attribution or acknowledgement by the authors, from the following original article: Ortendahl M, Näsman P. Perception of Smoking-Related Health Consequences among Pregnant and Non-Pregnant Women. Am J Addict. 2007;16:521–527. (doi:10.1080/10550490701643088).

The text in the manuscript published in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine was found to be almost word-for-word identical to the text published in the American Journal of Addictions. The data presented in all 4 tables is also essentially the same, but just presented in a different layout.

The authors have been fully co-operative with our investigations and agree with the Editors and Publisher on this course of action to correct the redundancy in the literature record.

The journal’s policy in this respect is clear: The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have been submitted only to The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere.

The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine published this article in good faith, and on the basis of signed statements made by the corresponding author regarding the originality of their work. The article is withdrawn from all print and electronic editions.

The now-retracted study has not yet been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.

There really isn’t much more to say about this case — save this: We get that mistakes happen and labs double submit. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. What’s harder to grasp is how the authors of duplicate articles could live in ignorance of the duplication, or, worse still, know about it and fail to bring it to the attention of the affected journals.

And (okay, maybe there was a little more to say here), we notice that Ortendahl and Näsman have published at least six studies of smoking cessation and somatic health in an 80-women cohort:

• Estimated time for occurrence of smoking-related consequences among pregnant and non-pregnant women. Ortendahl M, Uttermalm A, Simonsson B, Näsman P, Wallsten T. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2009 May;6(5):1665-75. doi: 10.3390/ijerph6051665. Epub 2009 May 15.
• Factors affecting continuation of smoking by pregnant and nonpregnant women. Ortendahl M, Näsman P. Subst Abus. 2009 Apr-Jun;30(2):150-7. doi: 10.1080/08897070902802075.
• Quitting smoking is perceived to have an effect on somatic health among pregnant and non-pregnant women. Ortendahl M, Näsman P. J Matern Fetal Neonatal Med. 2008 Apr;21(4):239-46. doi: 10.1080/14767050801924829.
• Judgments of risk for consequences of continuing or quitting smoking–a study of pregnant and nonpregnant women intending and not intending to quit. Ortendahl M, Näsman P. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2008;34(2):225-33. doi: 10.1080/00952990701877169.
• Perception of smoking-related health consequences among pregnant and non-pregnant women. Ortendahl M, Näsman P. Am J Addict. 2007 Nov-Dec;16(6):521-7.
• Somatic, psychological and social judgments related to smoking among pregnant and non-pregnant women. Ortendahl M, Näsman P. J Addict Dis. 2007;26(4):69-77.