Transport in Porous Media and the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering have retracted two articles on shale gas by Chinese researchers for duplication and other “mistakes.”
The articles came from a group at the State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation at Southwest Petroleum University, in Chengdu. The articles share a corresponding author.
According to the abstract of the TPM paper, “Pressure Transient Analysis for Multi-stage Fractured Horizontal Wells in Shale Gas Reservoirs”:
The presented model could be used to interpret pressure signals more accurately for shale gas reservoirs.
Make that a double, according to its notice:
Retraction Note to: Transp Porous Med (2014) 93:635–653 DOI 10.1007/s11242-012-9973-4; Transp Porous Med (2015) 106:707 DOI 10.1007/s11242-014-0439-8
The reason for retraction stated was not complete. The correct text is as follows:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. The article contains the same research approach and results including similar mistakes as the article published in Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering: Zhao, Y., Zhang, L., Wu, F.: Pressure Transient Analysis for Multi-fractured Horizontal Well in Shale Gas Reservoirs, 2012, vols. 90–91, pp. 31–38. This article has also been retracted http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920410512000897.
Both papers were simultaneously submitted to the two journals by the same corresponding author, omitting any referral to the other paper.
The publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.
And the other notice, for the similarly titled “Pressure Transient Analysis for Multi-fractured Horizontal Well in Shale Gas Reservoirs”:
This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. The article is a duplicate of a paper that has already been published in Transp Porous Med (2012) 93:635-653, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11242-012-9973-4.
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.
The TPM notice appears to reference an earlier version of the retraction notice. We see an erratum to the TPM paper, but it doesn’t differ much from the new notice, so we’re not sure what was incomplete about the original:
The above-mentioned article contains the same research approach and results including similar mistakes as the article published in the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering, Zhao Y., Zhang L., Wu F.: Pressure Transient Analysis for Multi-fractured Horizontal Well in Shale Gas Reservoirs, 2012, vols. 90–91, pp. 31–38. This article has also been retracted from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920410512000897.
Both papers were submitted knowingly and around the same time, by the same corresponding author to the two different journals, without any reference being made to the other paper.
The publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause.
We emailed Zhang, the corresponding author on both papers, but haven’t heard back.
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I guess the missing “at the request of the Editor-in-Chief” in the original notice is rather important, indicating that the authors and/or their home institutions did not play a role in the decision.
Marco, that is a good point. However, this indicates that the criteria for an EIC to move on a paper that carries duplication or other problems is a very journal-dependent decision. This is or can be very problematic, as some journals by the same publisher might not be handling equally concerning partial duplications or “problems” in the same way.
To the best of my knowledge this is just a standard Elsevier retraction notice – the one including the message who requested the retraction, that is.
The EiC will always play a role in the decision-making process, so yes, there may be difference in how journals from the same publisher would react to ‘the same’ type of overlap. The example here would be extremely unlikely to be treated differently at Elsevier as it is an outright double publication, but in other situations there will always be a human element in the decision process. There simply are grey areas, which we need to accept.
Marco, why do we have to accept inconsistencies in correcting the literature? If a publisher, Elsevier or other, has several hundred or even several thousand journals, and all operate with different ethical (or editorial screening) standards for each journal, is this correct? I do agree that a downright double/duplicate is fairly easy to resolve, with a retraction, but what about duplicated figures, one duplicated table or partial data duplication? Finally, Elsevier is a COPE member, so surely all Elsevier journals (and their editors) have to be held accountable to the same level of scrutiny? As I say, I simply cannot see why, when Elsevier (and other COPE members) are held to the same umbrella of COPE values*, why we, the scientific public, must accept different levels of scrutiny in the literature. Could you explain your logic a bit more, please.
* http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf
We have to accept “inconsistencies” because a lot of things are not black-and-white and never will be. You allude to it yourself: what to do in cases of one duplicated figure, table, data? This will depend on the situation, and thus by definition will lead to decisions that are ‘inconsistent’ across different journals.
Also, COPE does not set rules, it sets guidelines. The many cases it handles where editors ask for guidance, and the subsequent responses, show that COPE does not set rules and does not consider itself a ‘lawmaker’. In other words, Editors are not required to have the “same level of scrutiny”, whatever that means, when it comes to decisions regarding retraction vs correction.