Part publication: When it is ethical and when it is not

Byline: T. Sathyanarayana Rao, Chittaranjan. Andrade Many previous editorials in this journal have addressed ethical issues in publication and research.[sup][1],[2],[3],[4] In this editorial, we examine an issue that has troubled the journal editors in recent years; the subject was also raised in eJournal Club India, a collaborative initiative from the Indian Psychiatric Society and the Department of Psychopharmacology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bengaluru.[sup][5] The issue relates to part publication of data from a completed research study. Consider the situation where a team of investigators conducts and completes a study. The investigators, for manifold reasons, wish to publish as many papers as possible from the data that were collected. It occurs to them that they could analyze the data from about half of the sample and publish the results in one journal, and then analyze the data from the entire sample and publish the results in another journal. Is this ethical? The short answer is no, it is absolutely unethical to publish an analysis of data from only a part of the sample after a study is complete. When Part Publication Is Unethical Why is part publication unethical? One reason is that the purpose of communicating medical research findings is to advance the cause of science and to benefit patients. Publishing an analysis of data from only part of the sample could generate inconclusive or even misleading results because the analysis would be underpowered, or the subsample could be nonrepresentative. This could deceive a reader who does not see the second paper (or who sees the second paper much later) that presents the analysis of the entire dataset. Additional deceptions are that it would seem that two studies have been conducted, and perhaps that two studies support the conclusions of the authors when, in reality, there is only one study. Finally, meta-analyses would count the two publications as separate studies, thereby duplicating patient data and inflating the contribution of that study to the meta-analysis. When Part Publication May Be Permissible There could indeed be situations when publishing part of the data is acceptable. These situations can arise when the study is ongoing, and there is a specific reason why a preliminary analysis, followed by the publication of the preliminary results, is deemed necessary. An example is to present pilot data that carry an important message or to present the results of the preliminary analysis of data from an adaptive study design where the results of the preliminary analysis will influence the methods or design of the rest of the study. Such a preliminary analysis is usually preplanned, stated in the study protocol, and approved by the Ethics Committee or the Institutional Review Board. There is nothing unethical in conducting a study and presenting part of the results in one paper and the rest of the results in another paper as long as each paper is based on the full sample and each paper contains sufficient information for a standalone publication. For example, in a study of antipsychotic efficacy in schizophrenia, it could be reasonable to present psychopathology ratings, global ratings, assessments of quality of life, and assessments of adverse effects in one paper, and magnetic resonance imaging findings correlated with neuropsychological test battery results in another paper. …