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The objective of medical research is the quest for scientific truth, as well as the communication of new knowledge to the medical society through publication of novel results. Journals publishing these results rely on the trust that all persons involved (authors, peer reviewers, editors, and publishers) remain honest, following the rules and ethics of scientific integrity. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and a wide spectrum of pitfalls and misconducts may occur, ranging from less serious violations of ethical rules to most serious ones. In ascending order of severity, these include borderline questionable practices (HARKing [Hypothesizing After the Results are Known] and hyping), redundant publications, authorship misconducts, plagiarism, and all types of fraud (data falsification or fabrication). Awareness of all these fraudulent practices is essential to mitigate misconduct in academic writing.

Key Points Question Are publication language (English and Chinese) and trial results associated with duplicate publication of randomized clinical trials conducted in mainland China? Findings This cohort study included 470 Chinese-sponsored randomized clinical trials identified from clinical trial registries and published between 2008 and 2019. Approximately 12% of those randomized clinical trials have at least 1 duplicate publication; most are published in a different language than the main article. When main articles are published in Chinese, those with positive findings are more likely to have subsequent duplicate publication than those with negative findings. Meaning Results of this study suggest that publishing randomized clinical trials in different languages may impede identification of duplicates and be associated with duplicate publication bias., Importance Duplicate publications of randomized clinical trials are prevalent in the health-related literature. To date, few studies have assessed the interaction between duplicate publication and the language of the original publication. Objective To assess the existence of duplicate publication and the extent to which duplicate publication is associated with the language of the original publication. Design, Setting, and Participants In this retrospective cohort study, eligible randomized clinical trials were retrieved from trial registries, and bibliographic databases were searched to determine their publication status. Eligible randomized clinical trials were for drug interventions from January 1, 2008, to December 31, 2014. The search and analysis were conducted from March 1 to August 31, 2019. The trial registries were either primary registries recognized by the World Health Organization or the Drug Clinical Trial Registry Platform sponsored by the China Food and Drug Administration. Exposures Individual randomized clinical trials with positive vs negative results. Main Outcomes and Measures Journal articles were classified as main articles (determined by largest sample size and longest follow-up among all journal articles derived from that randomized clinical trial) and duplicates. The duplicates were classified into 4 types: (1) unreferenced subgroup analysis (article did not disclose itself as a subgroup analysis or reference its main article); (2) unreferenced republication (article did not disclose itself as a replicate of the main article or reference it); (3) unreferenced interim analysis (article did not disclose itself as an interim analysis or reference its main article); and (4) partial duplicate (article did not disclose its sharing a subset of participants with other articles or reference them). Results Among 470 randomized clinical trials published by August 2019 as journal articles, 55 (11.7%) had 75 duplicates, of which 53 (70.7%) were cross-language duplicates. Of the 75 duplicates, 33 (44.0%) were unreferenced republications, 25 (33.3%) unreferenced subgroup analyses, 15 (20.0%) unreferenced interim analyses, and 2 (2.7%) partial duplicates. When the main article of a randomized clinical trial was published in Chinese, those with positive findings were 2.48 (95% CI, 1.08-5.71) times more likely to have subsequent duplicate publication than those with negative findings. Conclusions and Relevance In this study, most duplicates were cross-language duplicates and the most common type was unreferenced republication of the main article. Duplicate publication bias exists when the main articles of randomized clinical trials were published in Chinese, potentially misleading readers and compromising journals and evidence synthesis., This cohort study of Chinese-sponsored randomized clinical trials assesses incidence of duplicate publication and the extent to which duplicate publication is associated with the language of publication.

Unethical behaviour by any of the actors involved in the edition of a scientific paper can lead to a miscalculation of evidence synthesis indicators. More specifically, duplicate publication may lead to the incorporation of false evidence in meta-analyses, which will adversely affect the assessment of the efficacy and safety of interventions.1 On the other hand, redundant evidence can affect the validity of practice recommendations by professional associations, which usually underpin clinical practice. Systematic reviews create an excellent opportunity to identify and denounce scientific fraud, as they involve a thorough literature search.2 Our research group has wide experience in the performance of systematic reviews in the field of hypertension and has witnessed a striking case of redundant publication. We thought it would be interesting to analyse this case in detail to start a debate on how the world of scientific publications work, how scientists and scholars are credited and the role that readers play when fraud is detected. In March 2015, our research group conducted a literature search on several databases with the purpose of performing a Cochrane systematic review.3 A total of eight papers signed by the same principal investigator were found to meet our inclusion criteria. Our group contacted the author to gather some further information on his studies, confirm their suitability for our systematic review and determine the relationship between them. In the light of the weak explanations provided by the author and the strong similarities observed among the different studies, we contacted the editors in chief of the journals involved to inform them on our suspicion of redundancy. The editors took between 2 and 9 months to provide an answer, which can be considered a reasonable time. Finally, the editors decided to maintain the papers with the earliest copyright related to the two different trials …

The number of articles published in open access journals (OAJs) has increased dramatically in recent years. Simultaneously, the quality of publications in these journals has been called into question. Few studies have explored the retraction rate from OAJs. The purpose of the current study was to determine the reasons for retractions of articles from OAJs in biomedical research. The Medline database was searched through PubMed to identify retracted publications in OAJs. The journals were identified by the Directory of Open Access Journals. Data were extracted from each retracted article, including the time from publication to retraction, causes, journal impact factor, and country of origin. Trends in the characteristics related to retraction were determined. Data from 621 retracted studies were included in the analysis. The number and rate of retractions have increased since 2010. The most common reasons for retraction are errors (148), plagiarism (142), duplicate publication (101), fraud/suspected fraud (98) and invalid peer review (93). The number of retracted articles from OAJs has been steadily increasing. Misconduct was the primary reason for retraction. The majority of retracted articles were from journals with low impact factors and authored by researchers from China, India, Iran, and the USA.

Do you remember the first (or 40th) time you received notification that a manuscript you submitted to a journal was accepted? Did you dance around your office, yell so loudly that the person in the office next door came to check on you, and/or immediately post the news to Facebook and Twitter to ensure that your success would be broadcast to all your friends and relatives? And did you then download the required forms and merrily sign them before scanning or faxing them back to the journal? Like many of you, I have done all of the above.

To analyse articles retracted due to irregularities by authors helps to determine the state of scientific integrity of a discipline or country. The Retraction Watch (RW) database is the largest worldwide database on retracted articles. The objective was to determine the reasons for and features of retracted biomedical articles by Spanish authors.A search was conducted in the RW database of 7 types of scientific articles from 9 biomedicine disciplines -biology, genetics, medicine, microbiology, neurosciences, nutrition, dentistry, public health and toxicology-, with at least one author working in a Spanish centre, and published between 1970 and 2018. The features of the articles and the reasons for their retraction were recorded.Of the 18,621 retracted articles, 217 (1%) were by Spanish authors; 155 (74%) were on biomedicine and the types of articles of interest. In most cases, there were several reasons for retracting an article. Research misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism) and duplication were involved in 25% and 35% of the cases, respectively. Twenty-two percent of the articles were retracted due to errors by the authors or the journals. A dentist retracted 18 articles -all from the same journal and in the same year, 2018-, which accounts for 12% of all retracted biomedicine articles.The number of retracted biomedicine articles by Spanish authors is low. Research misconduct was a frequent reason, with a similar percentage of articles retracted due to honest errors.

Editorial Boards of mainstream journals occasionally face ethical misconducts in received manus cripts. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides recommendations for editors on how to deal with suspected ethical misconduct in either received or published manuscripts. The manus cript is rejected when malpractice is observed during the peer review process, however, if the mis conduct is detected after the publication, the publication will be retracted. The Revista Chilena de Pediatría (Chilean Journal of Pediatrics) has not been exempt from these type of conflicts. In this article, we analyze different aspects regarding the lack of integrity in publications, such as authorship, plagiarism, and conflict of interest. We can conclude that malpractices take place mainly due to the lack of knowledge of the authors rather than intent to defraud. It is expected that this article will suc ceed in instructing and sensitizing our researchers on good practices in research and publication, and contribute, as far as possible, to prevent this actions in the manuscripts sent to our Journal.

We are going through a moment in which acts of disregard to the ethics in the public function are being disclosed at all levels. It is important to know the codes of ethics and good practices of each of the functions performed. In the field of scientific publications, it is highly recommended that all researchers who wish to publish their studies get to know the good scientific practices and the basic ethical principles of publications in science. The vast majority of medical journals are guided by the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and with respect to ethical shortcomings, by the guidelines of the COPE (Committee on Ethics in Publications). Frequent examples of scientific misconduct that can be found in local magazines are problems of authorship, redundant publication and plagiarism and lack of declaration of conflict of interest. In the present article we provide links to self-learning resources on these topics and we emphasize the importance of their wide dissemination.

The aim of this study was to determine how many papers have been retracted or withdrawn, and for what reason, in journals relating to plastic surgery.PubMed and SCOPUS were used, with the search terms (retracted OR withdrawn) AND (article OR publication OR paper) AND {(plastic surgery) OR (cosmetic surgery) OR (maxillofacial surgery) OR (craniofacial surgery)}. The papers were analyzed and classified according to the reason for retraction or withdrawal, journal name, publication year, and author. In the PubMed and SCOPUS, 227 and 114 titles were found, respectively, from which 34 duplicate titles were removed. An additional 261 titles which did not include "retracted" or "withdrawn" were removed, leaving 46 papers and 6 mined papers were added. The 52 full texts (42 "retracted" and 10 "withdrawn") were analyzed.The most frequent reason for retraction or withdrawal was duplication (17, 32.7%) followed by the author's request (9, 17.3%), plagiarism (7, 13.5%), and lack of permission (5, 9.6%). Retraction was most common in Plast Reconstr Surg (6, 12%) followed by Aesthetic Plast Surg (4, 7.9%), Ann Plast Surg (2, 3.9%), J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg (2, 3.9%), and Surg Res (2, 3.9%). Most authors retracted a paper just once; however, 6 authors retracted a paper twice or more. The first retraction was found in 1991, and the number of retractions showed a tendency to increase over time. However, the duplication rate did not change over time (R = 0.178, P = 0.117).Journal reviewers, as well as production editors, should check for duplication, plagiarism, or permission-related problems.

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Introduction: As MEDLINE indexers tag similar articles as duplicates even when journals have not addressed the duplication(s), we sought to determine the reasons behind the tagged duplications, and if the journals had undertaken or had planned to undertake any actions to address them. Materials and methods: On 16 January 2013, we extracted all tagged duplicate publications (DPs), analysed published notices, and then contacted MEDLINE and editors regarding cases unaddressed by notices. For non-respondents, we compared full text of the articles. We followed up the study for the next 5 years to see if any changes occurred. Results: We found 1011 indexed DPs, which represented 555 possible DP cases (in MEDLINE, both the original and the duplicate are assigned a DP tag). Six cases were excluded as we could not obtain their full text. Additional 190 (35%) cases were incorrectly tagged as DPs. Of 359 actual cases of DPs, 200 (54%) were due to publishers’ actions (e.g. identical publications in the same journal), and 159 (46%) due to authors’ actions (e.g. article submission to more than one journal). Of the 359 cases, 185 (52%) were addressed by notices, but only 25 (7%) retracted. Following our notifications, MEDLINE corrected 138 (73%) incorrectly tagged cases, and editors retracted 8 articles. Conclusions: Despite clear policies on how to handle DPs, just half (54%) of the DPs in MEDLINE were addressed by journals and only 9% retracted. Publishers, editors, and indexers need to develop and implement standards for better correction of duplicate published records.

Objective The purpose of this study was to compare effectiveness of different options for de-duplicating records retrieved from systematic review searches. Methods Using the records from a published systematic review, five de-duplication options were compared. The time taken to de-duplicate in each option and the number of false positives (were deleted but should not have been) and false negatives (should have been deleted but were not) were recorded. Results The time for each option varied. The number of positive and false duplicates returned from each option also varied greatly. Conclusion The authors recommend different de-duplication options based on the skill level of the searcher and the purpose of de-duplication efforts.

Publications Consultant, Sideview, Princes Risborough, UK Visiting Professor, University of Split, Croatia Former Chair, Committee on Publication Ethics (2009-12) If the purpose of medical journals is to disseminate research findings, it might seem illogical that editors generally forbid multiple publication of the same data in different journals. However, there are three important reasons why this is the case. First, redundant publication can bias the results of systematic reviews using meta-analysis. Second, multiple publication wastes resources. Third, since academic credit is based on the number of publications, redundant publication may give an unfair advantage to the authors.

With credit to the New England Journal of Medicine ( NEJM ), editors of medical journals started in 1969 to follow the Ingelfinger rule as instituted by then Editor Franz J. Ingelfinger. He proclaimed that NEJM would not publish anything that had been previously published in other media or journals, or content that had been presented at a meeting or press conference. The rule was conceived as a mechanism by which quality could be controlled (ie, allowing time for peer review) and as a way to prevent NEJM from being scooped by other journals if early results were leaked prematurely.1 Many journals followed suit and the rule is still upheld today. The Aesthetic Surgery Journal ( ASJ ), for example, will review abstracts that have been previously presented at meetings but not those that have been previously published in other journals. Previously presented work receives a statement including the conference name, date, and location, offering complete transparency to readers. Like many, we at ASJ spend copious amounts of time pondering ethical questions, and searching the gold-standard Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines (http://publicationethics.org) that help us navigate the rocky terrain that has become modern publishing. COPE is a forum for editors and publishers of peer-reviewed journals to discuss all aspects of publication ethics; the committee advises editors on how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct and offers flowcharts that have become required reading for anyone in the field. Armed with resources from COPE and others such as the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) guidelines, we worry a little less about plagiarism and the redundant publication issues that the Ingelfinger rule was intended to thwart. Like COPE, WAME (www.wame.org) is a global association that fosters communication … Corresponding Author: Ms Phaedra E. Cress, The American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, 11262 Monarch Street, Garden Grove, CA 92841, USA. E-mail: phaedra{at}surgery.org

Kelly Cobey has seen a litany of researchers preyed on by predatory journals — and has ideas on how to stop it.

The objective of this study was to characterize retracted publications in emergency medicine. We searched MEDLINE, Web of Science and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials to identify all retracted publications in the field of emergency medicine. We also searched an independent website that reports and archives retracted scientific publications. Two researchers independently screened titles, abstracts and full text of search results. Data from all included studies were then independently extracted. We identified 28 retraction notes. Eleven (39%) articles were published by authors from Europe. The oldest retracted article was published in 2001. The 28 retracted papers were published by 22 different journals. Two authors were named on multiples retractions. The median impact factor of journals was 1.03 (0.6-1.9). Almost all studies were available online [26/28 (93%)], but only 40% had watermarking on the article. The retraction notification was available for all articles. Three (11%) retraction notices did not clearly report the retraction reasons, and most retraction notices were issued by the editors [14 (56%)]. The most frequent retraction reasons were plagiarism [eight (29%)], duplicate publication [three (11%)] and overlap [two (2%)]. Retracted articles were cited on average 14 times. In most cases, the retraction cause did not invalidate the study's results [17 (60%)]. The most common reason for retraction was related to a misconduct by the authors. These results can question the necessity to normalize retraction procedures among the large number of biomedical editors and to educate future researchers on research integrity.

Objectives Despite the increasing awareness of scientific fraud, no attempt has been made to assess its prevalence in neurosurgery. The aim of our review was to assess the chronologic trend, reasons, research type/design, and country of origin of retracted neurosurgical publications. Methods Three independent reviewers searched the EMBASE and MEDLINE databases using neurosurgical keywords for retracted articles from 1995 to 2016. Archives of retracted articles ( retractionwatch.com ) and the independent Web sites of neurosurgical journals were also searched. Data including the journal, impact factor, reason for retraction, country of origin, and citations were extracted. Results A total of 97 studies were included for data extraction. Journal impact factor ranged from 0.57 to 35.03. Most studies (61) were retracted within the last 5 years. The most common reason for retraction was because of a duplicated publication found elsewhere (26), followed closely by plagiarism (22), or presenting fraudulent data (14). Other reasons included scientific errors/mistakes, author misattribution, and compromised peer review. Articles originated from several countries and some were widely cited. Conclusions Retractions of neurosurgical publications are increasing significantly, mostly because of issues of academic integrity, including duplicate publishing and plagiarism. Implementation of more transparent data-sharing repositories and thorough screening of data before manuscript submission, as well as additional educational programs for new researchers, may help mitigate these issues in the future.

Aim To analyze mistakes and misconduct in multidisciplinary and specialized biomedical journals. Methods We conducted searches through PubMed to retrieve errata, duplicate, and retracted publications (as of January 30, 2014). To analyze publication activity and citation profiles of countries, multidisciplinary, and specialized biomedical journals, we referred to the latest data from the SCImago Journal & Country Rank database. Total number of indexed articles and values of the h-index of the fifty most productive countries and multidisciplinary journals were recorded and linked to the number of duplicate and retracted publications in PubMed. Results Our analysis found 2597 correction items. A striking increase in the number of corrections appeared in 2013, which is mainly due to 871 (85.3%) corrections from PLOS One. The number of duplicate publications was 1086. Articles frequently published in duplicate were reviews (15.6%), original studies (12.6%), and case reports (7.6%), whereas top three retracted articles were original studies (10.1%), randomized trials (8.8%), and reviews (7%). A strong association existed between the total number of publications across countries and duplicate (rs = 0.86, P

Objectives/Hypothesis Duplicate publication—deemed highly unethical—is the reproduction of substantial content in another article by the same authors. In 1999, Rosenthal et al. identified an 8.5% incidence of duplicate articles in two otolaryngology journals. We explored the current incidence in three otolaryngology journals in North America and Europe. Study Design Retrospective literature review. Methods Index articles in 2008 in Archives of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, Laryngoscope, and Clinical Otolaryngology were searched using MEDLINE. Potential duplicate publications in 2006 through 2010 were identified using the first, second, and last authors' names. Three authors independently investigated suspected duplicate publications—classifying them by degree of duplication. Results Of 358 index articles screened, 75 (20.9%) had 119 potential duplicates from 2006 to 2010. Full review of these 119 potential duplicates revealed a total of 40 articles with some form of redundancy (33.6% of the potential duplicates) involving 27 index articles (7.5% of 358 index articles); one (0.8%) “dual” publication (identical or nearly identical data and conclusions to the index article); three (2.5%) “suspected” dual publications (less than 50% new data and same conclusions); and 36 (30.3%) publications with “salami-slicing” (portion of the index article data repeated) were obtained. Further analysis compared the likelihood of duplicate publication by study source and subspecialty within otolaryngology. Conclusions The incidence of duplicate publication has not significantly changed over 10 years. “Salami-slicing” was a concerning practice, with no cross-referencing in 61% of these cases. Detecting and eliminating redundant publications is a laborious task, but it is essential in upholding the journal quality and research integrity. Levels of Evidence N/A. Laryngoscope, 124:655–658, 2014

Duplicate publication in orthopaedic journals may further an author’s academic career but this is at the cost of both scientific integrity and knowledge. Multiple publications of the same work increase the workload of editorial boards, misguide the reader and affect the process of meta-analysis. We found that of 343 ‘original’ articles published in the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery in 1999, 26 (7.6%) had some degree of redundancy. The prevalence of duplicate publications in the orthopaedic literature appears to be less than that in other surgical specialties but it is still a matter of concern. It is the author’s responsibility to notify the editor of any duality when submitting a paper for publication.

In reading the article by Xu, Z., et al. entitled “Analysis of the Interaction of Dp44mT with Human Serum Albumin and Calf Thymus DNA Using Molecular Docking and Spectroscopic Techniques” [1], there is evidence that some of the key methods and comparisons utilized in this study are non-optimal and problematic[...]

Plagiarism is defined as a form of misconduct which involves copying or stealing others’ ideas, methods, findings, or words and passing off as one’s own original work without acknowledging the orig...

Publication Ethics Publication ethics is not a novel concept, nor is it one for which there is little information in the literature. However, because policies and best practice benchmarks are continually evolving, we thought that our readers may appreciate an update on the topic. Since writing this piece, we've already received two e-alerts from Retraction Watch containing the following headlines: “Confusion reigns: Are these four retractions for compromised peer review, or not?” and “Authors in 2014 peer review ring lose 4 more papers each for ‘compromised’ review.” Similar announcements continue daily. Like you, we educate ourselves regularly by reviewing cases and new information from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE, www.publicationethics.org), the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME, www.wame.org), the International Society for Technical and Medical Editors (ISTME, www.ismte.org) and the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP, www.sspnet.org) along with blogs such as The Scholarly Kitchen (https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/). A Google search for “publication ethics” yields 2,330,000 hits, so we are not without resources in this regard. Yet why do these problems persist? ### The Ever-Changing Landscape On August 6, 1991, the Internet was officially born.1 Although the Internet vastly broadened the availability of and access to research, it has also made plagiarism much simpler to execute—whole sections are now only a copy and paste away. This can be a particular challenge in fast-moving fields like aesthetic surgery, which change rapidly in both the surgical and non-surgical space. New technology breeds innovation but it also fosters the temptation to take shortcuts. One example is salami slicing, a form of redundant publication in which authors segment their own work to create multiple journal articles that share hypothesis, methodology, and/or results and afford them more publications on their curriculum vitae (CV). These repetitive articles dilute the literature and are obvious to anyone reading beyond the abstract. With so many resources … Corresponding Author: Mr Christopher Reid, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, USA. E-mail: christopher.reid{at}oup.com

AJR 2016; 206:W61 0361–803X/16/2064–W61 © American Roentgen Ray Society Authorship for Leading Journals: Issue on Ethical Problems The report by Baek et al. [1] entitled “Trend Toward an Increase in Authorship for Leading Radiology Journals,” which appeared in the November 2015 issue of the AJR, was very interesting. The authors mentioned that “the number of authors significantly and consistently increased” [1]. This observation has also been reported in other publications [2, 3]. The biggest concern is possible ethical problems related to multiple authorship. Teixeira da Silva and Dobranszki [4] noted that there are many common authorship problems, especially with regard to ghost and guest or gift authorship. It definitely is not possible for a single author to do everything in a large study, but this does not mean that a study requires multiple contributors. Supak-Smolcic et al. [5] noted that “ICMJE authorship criteria are not met in a substantial proportion of manuscripts submitted” to Biochemia Medica. In addition, Warrender noted that there should be a system with which to “determine which contributors merit authorship” [6]. The “contribution score” was proposed by Warrender for this purpose. Nevertheless, other ethical problems are also seen in manuscripts with multiple authors. The first common ethical problem is duplication. This problem is usually related to the attempts to the team of authors to try to recycle text, report the result in a separate publication (i.e., “perform a salami publication”), and repeat presentation of the same set of original data. Slight modifications are sometimes done, and the authors publish the work in different journals (see, for example, studies by Phupong et al. [7, 8]). The second ethical problem is omitting some authors without notifying those authors. In some serious cases, an author (or authors) might be removed by the corresponding author during the publication process, without the journal being notified and without the other authors’ approval (see, for example, the study by Srisuphanunt et al. [9], for which an author was added after the problem was reported to the journal). Similar to any other misconduct, if the journal uncovers a problem, announcement of the problem should be published in the journal, and the ethical problem must be reported. Viroj Wiwanitkit Surin Rajabhat University, Surin, Thailand

In recent years, several online tools have appeared capable of identifying potential plagiarism in science. While such tools may help to maintain or even increase the originality and ethical quality of the scientific literature, no apparent consensus exists among editors on the degree of plagiarism or self-plagiarism necessary to reject or retract manuscripts. In this study, two entire volumes of published original papers and reviews from Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology were retrospectively scanned for similarity in anonymized form using iThenticate software to explore measures to predictively identify true plagiarism and self-plagiarism and to potentially provide guidelines for future screening of incoming manuscripts. Several filters were applied, all of which appeared to lower the noise from irrelevant hits. The main conclusions were that plagiarism software offers a unique opportunity to screen for plagiarism easily but also that it has to be employed with caution as automated or uncritical use is far too unreliable to allow a fair basis for judging the degree of plagiarism in a manuscript. This remains the job of senior editors. Whereas a few cases of self-plagiarism that would not likely have been accepted with today's guidelines were indeed identified, no cases of fraud or serious plagiarism were found. Potential guidelines are discussed.

Objective Meetings of the European Society for Pediatric Urology (ESPU) and American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are held annually to promote dissemination of new research findings among practitioners. We conducted an observational study determining the rate of duplicate research presentations at the two meetings. Methods A systematic, in-year, cross reference analysis of all clinical and basic research presentations at the ESPU and AAP meetings, for the years 2006–2009, was conducted. The search strategy included abstract title, authorship, country of origin, institution, study design, significance, and sample size. Three reviewers independently abstracted all data. Discrepancies were resolved by consensus. Results In total, 566 abstracts were presented at the four ESPU meetings. Of these, 23 (4.1%) were also presented at an AAP meeting: 2 of 137 (1.5%) were represented in 2006, 6 of 139 (4.3%) in 2007, 6 of 126 (4.8%) in 2008, and 9 of 164 (5.5%) in 2009. Duplicate presentations were altered by changing the title (57%), adding or removing authors (48%), or changing authorship order (63%) or sample size (22%). Agreement between reviewers was above 90% (kappa = 0.913). Conclusions Although there was only a 4% duplicate presentation rate between the studied ESPU and AAP meetings, our results suggest a trend toward increasing duplication over the past 4 years.

Motivation: Document similarity metrics such as PubMed's ‘Find related articles’ feature, which have been primarily used to identify studies with similar topics, can now also be used to detect duplicated or potentially plagiarized papers within literature reference databases. However, the CPU-intensive nature of document comparison has limited MEDLINE text similarity studies to the comparison of abstracts, which constitute only a small fraction of a publication's total text. Extending searches to include text archived by online search engines would drastically increase comparison ability. For large-scale studies, submitting short phrases encased in direct quotes to search engines for exact matches would be optimal for both individual queries and programmatic interfaces. We have derived a method of analyzing statistically improbable phrases (SIPs) for assistance in identifying duplicate content. Results: When applied to MEDLINE citations, this method substantially improves upon previous algorithms in the detection of duplication citations, yielding a precision and recall of 78.9% (versus 50.3% for eTBLAST) and 99.6% (versus 99.8% for eTBLAST), respectively. Availability: Similar citations identified by this work are freely accessible in the Déjà vu database, under the SIP discovery method category at http://dejavu.vbi.vt.edu/dejavu/ Contact: merrami@collin.edu