Researchers publish the same COVID-19 paper three times

If you’re looking for more evidence that researchers are flooding the zone with COVID-19 papers that do little to advance the state of the science, we present Psychology, Health & Medicine. 

The journal, a Taylor & Francis title, in April published “Mental health burden for the public affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in China: Who will be the high-risk group?,” by a pair of authors in China. The researchers submitted their manuscript on March 19, received acceptance on April 6 and saw the work published on April 14.

Evidently, that wasn’t enough time to run a plagiarism check — or, as you’ll see, other due diligence — because now the journal has retracted the article for being a duplicate of two other papers in different journals. The move came after a staffer at Elsevier — a competing publisher — alerted a portfolio manager at Taylor & Francis about the issue.

In part, PHM can be considered the victim of what looks to be a scheme that took advantage of gaps in the ability to check manuscripts prior to publication. 

One of the duplicated articles, “Chinese mental health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic,” has a virtually identical chronology. It was submitted to the Asian Journal of Psychiatry, an Elsevier title, on March 20, accepted March 26 and published April 14. Hey! Two publications on the same day!

But the slash line for the third paper is ugly for a couple of reasons. “Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: a web-based cross-sectional survey” was submitted to Psychiatry Research, another Elsevier title, on March 20, accepted on March 26 and published … on March 26. 

According to the retraction notice: 

We, the Editor and Publisher of Psychology, Health & Medicine, have retracted the following article:

Yeen Huang & Ning Zhao, Mental health burden for the public affected by the COVID-19 outbreak in China: Who will be the high-risk group?, Psychology, Health & Medicine, 2020, 10.1080/13548506.2020.1754438

It has come to our attention that this paper is substantively similar to two previously published papers and therefore constitutes duplicate publication. The two previously published papers are detailed below

–Yeen Huang & Ning Zhao, Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: a web-based cross-sectional survey, Psychiatry Research, 2020

– Yeen Huang & Ning Zhao, Chinese mental health burden during the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Journal of Psychiatry, 2020

The editors also flagged the article with a correction, which reads: 

It has been brought to our attention that Ning Zhao is not an author and does not satisfy the authorship criteria adopted by Taylor & Francis. For this reason, she has been removed from the author listing.

In addition, the affiliation details listed for Yeen Huang have been updated to reflect the correct affiliation information. The change is detailed below.

Previous Listing:

Yeen Huang, The 6th Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University Health Science Center, Nanshan Hospital Affiliated to Shenzhen University Shenzhen, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China; Huazhong University of Science and Technology Union Shenzhen Hospital, Shenzhen, People’s Republic of China

Updated Listing:

Yeen Huang, Shenzen Second People’s Hospital, Shenzen, People’s Republic of China

We emailed Huang and Zhao for comment but have yet to hear back. 

Meanwhile, Zoe Cross,  the portfolio manager for Allied & Public Health Journals at Taylor & Francis, told us: 

This paper was first brought to our attention by the authors themselves, who requested a change in authorship after online publication. While we were investigating this issue, a colleague from Elsevier (publishers of the other journals concerned) contacted myself to highlight the duplicate publications. Following further investigation, it was agreed that these were in fact duplicates, and that the two later versions were to be retracted with a notice to highlight the issues with authorship as well.

Cross said the article did not undergo a check for potential plagiarism at any stage in the publication process: 

For this journal currently, the Editors may request ad hoc plagiarism checks where there are concerns, but this is not carried out as a matter of course. We are considering implementing plagiarism checks for all accepted papers for this journal (prior to publication), but due to the high rejection rate we do not run checks before acceptance, as the majority of papers never make it to publication in the journal.

Rajiv Tandon, the editor in chief of the Asian Journal of Psychiatry, said his journal would soon be retracting the paper it published. [See update below for the text of the notice.]

Lynn DeLisi, the editor-in-chief of Psychiatry Research, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Update, 2100 UTC, 10/29/20: DeLisi forwarded our request for comment to Elsevier, whose spokesperson told us:

In accordance with COPE recommendations that “If redundant publication occurs, the journal that published first may issue a Notice of Redundant Publication but should not retract the article unless there are other concerns such as the reliability of the data” ; “Retractions are not usually appropriate if the authorship is disputed but there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings”

Psychiatry Research, 2020 does not intend to retract the article: Yeen Huang & Ning Zhao, Generalized anxiety disorder, depressive symptoms and sleep quality during COVID-19 outbreak in China: a web-based cross-sectional survey. However, the journal  will publish a corrigendum to correct the authorship list.

The spokesperson added:

The Asian Journal of Psychiatry is in the process of retracting the article by the same authors, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2020.102052 that duplicates the Psychiatry Research, 2020 article. The retraction notice will read as follows: This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/withdrawalpolicy).

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 Psychiatry Research, volume 288 (2020) 112954 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112954 . One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. As such this article represents a misuse 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.

Ning Zhao and Ning Zhao’s institution (Huazhong University of Science and Technology Union Shenzhen Hospital) were not involved in the manuscript and were not aware of the multiple submissions by Yeen Huang. Author Yeen Huang’s affiliation should be Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital, not Huazhong University of Science and Technology Union Shenzhen Hospital.”

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