Molecules has pulled a 2010 article by a trio of chemists from Tunisia who tried — and succeeded, for a while, at least — to publish the same data twice. The article was titled “An Expeditious Synthesis of [1,2]Isoxazolidin-5-ones and [1,2]Oxazin-6-ones from Functional Allyl Bromide Derivatives.” And indeed it was expeditious. Here’s the notice:
Excerpt: We have been made aware that the figures, tables, compounds and experimental data reported in the title paper [1] are duplicated in another publication by the same authors [2]. Comparing the received dates of both articles, it is apparent that, although the Molecules article was published more than a year earlier, it was submitted to MDPI several weeks after the manuscript of [2] was received by Taylor and Francis. Since it is our policy to only consider for publication original unpublished articles that are not under consideration by another journal, and do not potentially infringe any copyright, and all authors explicitly agree to this as a condition for processing their submissions, we view this as a deliberate attempt to double publish this material and a violation of our rules on this matter. MDPI is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics and takes the responsibility to enforce strict ethical policies and standards very seriously. To ensure the addition of only high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication, paper [1] is retracted and shall be marked accordingly. We apologize to our readership that this went undetected until now.
The Taylor and Francis paper is a 2011 article in Synthetic Communications, which also has been retracted, as this freely available notice explains:
We, the Editor and Publisher of Synthetic Communications, are retracting the following article:
Aïcha Arfaoui, Imen Beltaïef, and Hassen Amri, “One-Pot Synthesis of [1,2]Isoxazolidin-5-ones and [1,2]Oxazin-6-ones,” Synthetic Communications, 41.10 (2011): 1536–1543, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397911.2010.487292We are now cognizant that a substantially similar version of this article was simultaneously submitted to and published in the journal Molecules:
Aïcha Arfaoui, Imen Beltaïef, and Hassen Amri, “An Expeditious Synthesis of [1,2]Isoxazolidin-5-ones and [1,2]Oxazin-6-ones from Functional Allyl Bromide Derivatives,” Molecules, 15.6 (2010): 4094–4101, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/molecules15064094
This action constitutes a breach of warranties made by the authors. We note that we received, peer-reviewed, accepted, and published the article in good faith based on these warranties, and censure this action.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as RETRACTED.
Update, 6 p.m. Eastern, 11/12/14: Editor Martyn Rittman reached out to us with more information:
We were alerted to this case by a reader, and after consultation with the Editor-in-Chief decided that a retraction was necessary. The rest of the details can be found in the retraction notice. Regarding authors continuing to publish, we make a decision on a case by case basis. If there is an accusation of misconduct we will investigate as far as possible, possibly with the assistance of third parties such as university bodies. If the claim is substantiated we may consider blocking the authors for a period of time, depending on the gravity of the offense.
If there was ever a perfect example of how a retraction should go down, this was it. In most cases, I see only one paper go down, the latter one, but here, we are clearly seeing punishment for an unethical act, namely dual submission, and thus consequently dual publication. But the fact that the dual submission weighed heavily on the decision is significant. It was like a shot to both legs, as opposed to the traditional shot to one leg only. The question is, if the duplication were only partial, let’s say to only one figure, or one sub-set of data, would MDPI and Taylor and Francis adopt the same approach? In this case, the scenario is clear, but it would be important if RW could somehow request both publishers to come forward publically to offer their policy if only partial duplication would have been the case. The fact that we see justice fluctuate on a case by case basis indicates, I believe, insecurity by the publishers. The authors got their double-dose of justice, but that still does not let the publishers off the hook, because the academic peer pool still wants to know by what rules the game is being played.
Comparing the received dates of both articles, it is apparent that, although the Molecules article was published more than a year earlier, it was submitted to MDPI several weeks after the manuscript of [2] was received by Taylor and Francis.
The rapidity of publishing through MDPI is interesting, given the concerns about the quality of peer-reviewing at their journals.
In my experience, some Taylor & Francis journals are notoriously slow, with long publication backlogs (printed journals – with limited page number per issue…), and are perhaps unsuitable as a comparison of the publication time in the open access MDPI journals. The paper in question is rather short – 2.5 spacious pages containing the main text with figures, 2 pages of experimental, 3 pages of references – and should be easy to review rather fast. So, in this case the rapidity of publishing does not tell us anything about the quality of peer-review in MDPI journals (Disclaimer: I have served as reviewer for journals both from T&F and MDPI).
In response to herr doktor bimler, if you look at the dates on the MDPI paper, it was published less than a month and a half after submission:
Received: 26 April 2010; in revised form: 14 May 2010 / Accepted: 24 May 2010 / Published: 7 June 2010
I do find it interesting that even a short paper can go through a proper peer-review, as well as production and publication in such a short period
Just been looking in your wonderful retraction database (http://retractiondatabase.org) and I notice that the Synthetic Communications paper is all present and (in)correct, but the Molecules paper is not included. Can you rectify that?
Thanks for the kind words! That retraction is already in there. If you’re ever looking for more retractions by a particular author, just click on his or her name.