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Editorial

Editors and Authors: A Sacred Trust

Recently it has come to our attention, through the careful scrutiny of George Canellos, editor of the Journal’s Lymphoma Section, that a paper we published bears striking similarity, in organization and text, to a number of similar reviews submitted by the same author over the past several years. In many instances, the text of these articles is repeated word for word in multiple papers, and without reference to the author’s prior publication. The repetition is so complete as to dispel any chance that it was accidental. This is a breach of a sacred trust that is shared by authors and their editors.

We call the readers’ attention to this departure from accepted publication ethics for several reasons. The Oncologist explicitly stipulates that papers may not have been published before. We do so to assure that the information is an original and timely submission, worthy of our readership’s attention. Second, like other journals, we scrupulously respect copyright law, a basic tenet of international publication. And finally, we regard each submission as an academic accomplishment, untainted by false motives, concealments, or misrepresentations.

This episode, the re-publication of essentially the same text in multiple journals, violates each of these tenets. While the material within the article had been reviewed by referees and appeared to be accurate, the submission of this article to The Oncologist and to other journals is unacceptable. We have notified the editors of the other journals in which the same material was published. In addition, we have advised responsible officials of the author’s academic institution of this incident and have asked them to take appropriate action. We have also attached a permanent link from this editorial to the duplicated paper. Finally, the Journal will not accept any other manuscript submitted by this individual.

As this matter is currently undergoing academic investigation, we have chosen not to provide references to this article or to the other related papers published in other journals. However, we believe that the issue of repeated publication of an author’s writing is sufficiently important that this case deserves immediate editorial comment.

We apologize to our readers and join hands with the other journals’ editors in committing our journals to maintaining the integrity of our published papers. Henceforth, we will send our reviewers the recently published titles of authors who submit manuscripts.

Finally, we thank Dr. Canellos, who is universally appreciated for his editorial acumen, for his diligence and his thoughtful assessment of this unfortunate event.

This Article Full Text (PDF) eLetters: Submit a response to this article Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services E-mail this article link to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Reprints/Permissions Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Chabner, B. A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Chabner, B. A.