Yesterday, we wrote about the retraction of a paper that ended up published despite the fact that peer reviewers had recommended rejecting it. Today, we have the (short) tale of a paper retracted because the publisher posted it a second time while they were buying acquiring the journal where it appeared.
Here’s the notice for “The association between depression, socio-economic factors and dietary intake in mothers having primary school children living in Rey, South of Tehran, Iran,” published in the Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Diseases:
This article has been retracted by the publisher because it was republished in error in the process of journal acquisition. BioMed Central apologize to the authors and readers for the error and any inconvenience caused.
BioMed Central tells us they bought acquired the journal from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences and began publishing it in August 2012. Neither version of the study has been cited, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge.
We suppose U.S. publishers are breathing a sigh of relief that a trade embargo with Iran prevented them from having made this administrative error…
Update, 11:45 a.m. Eastern, 5/16/13: BMC contacted us to clarify that they hadn’t bought the journal; they were just publishing on behalf of Tehran University of Medical Sciences, which still owns it. We’ve replaced references to buying with acquiring, including in the headline. But as we told BMC, this is the first time we’ve seen acquire mean something other than buy!