A missed withdrawal request has led to doubled up publication and a later retraction for Brazilian physicists, through no fault of their own.
“Atmospheric Plasma Treatment of Carbon Fibers for Enhancement of Their Adhesion Properties” was presented at an Institute of Physics (IOP) conference in 2010. The proceedings weren’t published until May 2014.
In the meantime, the plasma scientists withdrew their paper from consideration and submitted it to IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, where it was published in February 2013. Unfortunately, in the four year delay between the conference and the Institute of Physics publication, the withdrawal request got lost.
Here’s the notice:
The article was originally submitted to the editor of this volume but was withdrawn by the authors who subsequently submitted the work to the journal IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, where it has since been published [1]. As the publication in [1] pre-dates the publication in JPCS we are withdrawing this version to remove the duplication. The editor of this volume, L. Soto, apologises for any inconvenience caused to the authors and to readers.[1] IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science, 41 (2) , art. no. 6412809 , pp. 319-324.
And a clarification from an IOP representative:
This was an error during the publication process not a duplicate submission.
There was a delay between the conference taking place and the publication of the proceedings and the withdrawal request was lost sight of by the guest editor who was managing the submission/peer review in the intervening period.
This delay of four years from the conference to the publication is a shame. In my subfield sometimes there are 15-18 months, still enough to hamper any productive output from a conference proceedings. Meanwhile I nearly never submit proceedings papers due to the expected delays. Thumbs up to the authors.