The Journal of Surgical Oncology has retracted a 2007 paper on hospitalizations of breast cancer patients for being a duplicate of another, presumably earlier, article. Although the usable information in the retraction notice ends just about there.
The article, “Factors Affecting Hospital Readmission Rates for Breast Cancer Patients in Western Australia,” appeared online in January 2007 in the journal and came from a group at the School of Finance and Applied Statistics at Australian National University in Canberra.
According to the notice:
By this notice, the Editor and the Publisher of the Journal of Surgical Oncology retract from publication the following article:
“Factors Affecting Hospital Readmission Rates for Breast Cancer Patients in Western Australia,” Michael A. Martin, Ramona Meyricke, Terry O’Neill, and Steven Roberts, Journal of Surgical Oncology, Published online January 17, 2007, DOI: 10.1002/jso.20742.
The article has been formally deemed a duplicate submission. The Editor and the Publisher of the Journal of Surgical Oncology regret the occurrence of this unfortunate incident.
It would be nice to know a couple of things here. For example, when and where was the duplicated paper published? And who were the authors?
We found a clue on the website of Ramona Meyricke, who lists the following paper (along with the now-retracted article) among her publications:
Lai, J., Martin, M., Meyricke, R. O’Neill, T., Roberts, S. (2007) Factors Associated with Short-term Hospital Readmission Rates for Breast Cancer Patients in Western Australia: An Observational Study, Journal of the American College of Surgeons, Volume 204, Issue 2
The only difference seems to be the missing author, Lai. But why the journal neglected to include that information — if it’s in fact the correct paper — is anyone’s guess. We’ve tried to contact some of the people involved, and will update with anything we learn.