A group of Brazilian dental researchers has lost two 2012 papers for duplication — twice the typical body count for such situations.
The two articles appeared in the Journal of Orthodontics and the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery about four months apart.
The first, from the JOMS, “Selective Use of Hand and Forearm Muscles During Bone Screw Insertion: A Natural Torque Meter,” was published online Aug. 30 — just about the time the Journal of Orthodontics was accepting the duplicate submission.
As the JOMS retraction notice states:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief.
The article is essentially a duplicate of a paper that was published in J. Orthod., 39 (2012) 270–278, http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/1465312512Z.00000000040. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this article represents a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.
Not to be outdone, the Journal of Orthodontics is also retracting its version — in a notice that’s behind a pay wall — titled “Selective use of hand and forearm muscles during mini-implant insertion: a natural torquimeter” (not to be confused with a Torquemada, although for some people a trip to the orthodontist is pretty close to torture):
The above paper originally published in 39(4) December issue of Journal of Orthodontics has been withdrawn on grounds of dual publication.
Reblogged this on The Firewall.
As usual with Brazilian papers, this interesting case eceived no attention not even among Brazilian readers. Let me add a few details I happen to know about this case.
1) The group had both papers retracted because both were actually resubmissions of a previous original version published in a Brazilian journal, as “Barros, S. E.C. ; Janson, G. ; CHIQUETO, Kelly Fernanda Galvão ; FERREIRA, E. S. . Uso seletivo dos músculos da mão e antebraço durante a inserção de mini-implantes: um torquímetro natural. Ortodontia (São Paulo), v. 45, p. 565-573, 2012.”. Apparently, someone contacted the international journals anonymously and triggered the retractions.
2) This work, apart from yielding the auhors two retractions, also earned them a prize, according with the link below (in Portuguese):
http://www.ortociencia.com.br/orto2012/p-jovem-pesquisador.asp
3) Second author Janson, who has over 300 published papers (-2) and scored 18 (-2) papers in 2012, has not removed these papers from his National CV, as can be seen below:
https://uspdigital.usp.br/tycho/curriculoLattesMostrar?codpes=53970
4) The authors had other papers questioned by colleagues, as exampled in the case below:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889540612010797
Maybe Pubpeer would help here?