When Retraction Watch began in 2010, our co-founders Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus quickly realized they couldn’t keep up with the hundreds of retractions that appeared each year. And the problem has only gotten worse — although we’ve added staff, the number of retractions issued each year has increased dramatically. According to our growing database, more than 1,300 retractions were issued last year (and that doesn’t include expressions of concern and errata). So to get new notices in front of readers more quickly, we’ve started a new feature called “Caught our Notice,” where we highlight a recent notice that stood out from the others. If you have any information about what happened, feel free to contact us at [email protected].
What caught our attention: We’ve seen rejected papers published in error, and accepted papers duplicated by error in the same journal. But we rarely see this: The paper was accepted, but a “miscommunication of rejection” led the authors — believing their paper had been declined — to publish their paper elsewhere, causing its duplication in an unrelated journal. Maybe next time the editor will just write, “Congratulations. Your paper was accepted. Do not publish it anywhere else.”
Journal: Iranian Journal of Kidney Diseases
Authors: Sepideh Zununi Vahed, Ahmad Poursadegh Zonouzi, Hossein Ghanbarian, Moteza Ghojazadeh, Nasser Samadi, Mohammadreza Ardalan
Affiliations: Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran; Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran.
The editors wish to draw attention to an article published in the July 2017 issue of the Iranian Journal of Kidney Diseases (Volume 11, Number 4) that has also appeared in another journal:
Upregulated Expression of Circulating MicroRNAs in Kidney Transplant Recipients With Interstitial Fibrosis and Tubular Atrophy Zununi Vahed S, Poursadegh Zonouzi A, Ghanbarian H, Ghojazadeh M, Samadi N, Ardalan M. Iran J Kidney Dis. 2017 Jul;11(4):309-318.
which is also published as:
Differential expression of circulating miR-21, miR-142-3p and miR-155 in renal transplant recipients with impaired graft function Zununi Vahed S, Poursadegh Zonouzi A, Ghanbarian H, Ghojazadeh M, Samadi N, Omidi Y, Ardalan M Int Urol Nephrol. 2017 Apr 28. doi: 10.1007/s11255-017-1602-2. [Epub ahead of print]
This inadvertent duplicate publication has occurred as a result of miscommunication of the rejection and a subsequent acceptance of the manuscript, and the authors and publishers were not aware of the simultaneous publications.
Hereby, the editors of the Iranian Journal of Kidney Diseases retract the following publication and regret this error…
Date of Article: July 2017
Times cited, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science: Zero
Date of Notice: September 2017
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How exactly is a paper published with zero input from the authors, such as approving the final proofs or signing a copyright transfer agreement? This excuse makes no sense at all.