While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at.
Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published.
And after we reached out to the authors, the lead author told us they plan to withdraw the published version next week – which the editor of the journal had called for in April but its publisher, MDPI, had not yet decided to do.
The journal Applied Sciences published the paper, “Correlations between SSQ Scores and ECG Data during Virtual Reality Walking by Display Type,” on March 4, 2024.
Both the first author of the paper, Mi-Hyun Choi, and the senior author, Jin Seung Choi, are professors at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea.
The reviewer, who asked us to remain anonymous, received the manuscript from editors at Virtual Reality on January 22. That manuscript had a submission date of January 2, less than two weeks before the authors submitted it to Applied Sciences.
“I reviewed this human-subject study and noticed, curiously, that there was no ethics statement on the paper detailing whether there had been any ethics approval,” he said, noting at the time he raised these concerns to the editor in chief of Virtual Reality.
In the published version, the authors state the protocol was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Committee.
In the review report we saw, the reviewer wrote the manuscript couldn’t be published in its current form because it didn’t properly cite prior research on the topic, lacked a novel thesis and lacked statistical rigor.
“In isolation, each of these omissions could warrant a minor revision, however, the manuscript is quite scant on detail and unfortunately reads more like a conference paper or a short-and-sweet-paper,” he wrote on Jan. 23, 2024.
But after he raised these concerns to the editor-in-chief, he didn’t see the paper again, he told us. Then, he was informed the authors withdrew it from consideration on March 5 — the day after, it turns out, Applied Sciences published its version.
In emails we have seen from this April, the reviewer brought the dual submission to the attention of both journals. In response, Rob Macredie, the editor-in-chief for Virtual Reality, noted the authors stated in their cover letter to the journal that the paper was “currently not under review, nor it will [sic] be submitted to another journal while under consideration for Virtual Reality.”
Later that month, Giulio Cerulo, the editor in chief of Applied Sciences, told the reviewer the double submission was a “clear violation of the ethical standards and, in my opinion, it should lead to a retraction of the published article.”
But when we followed up with Applied Sciences, an MDPI title, they said they were still investigating the paper. Jisuk Kang, the publishing manager at MDPI, said in an email the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) “retraction guidelines do not support the retraction of a published article based solely on dual submission, if the integrity of the data remains intact.” Kang noted the journal was still reviewing the paper and if the investigation uncovered misconduct, “further action will be taken as appropriate.”
COPE considers dual and multiple submissions “unethical practices in academic publishing,” but the organization doesn’t recommend a course of action once the papers are already published.
For a similar case submitted to COPE, the members said the organization would “always advocate educational rather than punitive action” and suggested editors publish an editorial “on the ethics of dual submissions.”
Jin Seung Choi first told us earlier this month the dual submission was “not appropriate,” and he said it was a “simple oversight” by the authors. He also said he would not support the retraction of the paper, as it contains “no plagiarism, misconduct, or issues concerning research originality.”
“Although it was my mistake, I think it would not have happened if the submission system had been able to recognize in advance that it was under review by another journal,” he told us.
After we followed up to confirm his affiliation this week, Jin Seung Choi told us he would withdraw the paper after meeting with his co-authors next week. “I do not want the problem to spread any further,” he wrote.
The reviewer told us he suspected “the authors either misrepresented themselves or acted maliciously” and were familiar with the submission process for journals.
The paper has been cited once by a paper in the same journal, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
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