The authors of a 2014 paper in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons about incisional hernia have lost their article for being a duplicate submission.
The paper, “Impact on Quality of Life of Using an Onlay Mesh to Prevent Incisional Hernia in Midline Laparotomy: A Randomized Clinical Trial,” came from a group at the Parc Tauli University Hospital, part of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in Spain.
By duplicating another paper, the authors (three of which appear to be listed on both papers) committed “a severe abuse of the scientific publishing system,” according to the retraction notice:
The article is a duplicate of a paper that has already been published in World J Surg (2014) 38:2223–2230. DOI – 10.1007/s00268-014-2510-6
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.
We’ve contacted the corresponding author, and will update if we hear back.