Cutting the cake! publication ethics inscience

EDITORIAL

Scientific publications in Dentistry are essential to con-tinuously move the field forward. We simply needresearch to progress, and for the research to be useful,it should be disseminated through publications.Researchers also need to demonstrate their productivityto attract funding, maintain their reputations and per-haps get promotions. Research is not only an altruisticactivity. Unfortunately, sometimes a few researchersmay feel tempted to cut very thin slices of theirresearch to present as many papers as possible. Thesalami-tactic is well-known and basically addresses theissue of what is the least-publishable unit? Obviously,some studies are so complex and have so many vari-ables that more than one paper is merited in order tofully describe the finding and their implications. On theother hand, almost overlapping publications mayappear if too thin slices are made. We are not talkingabout plain plagiarism or scientific fraud, for which wealready have very good ethical guidelines, and whereappropriate, actions such as retraction of papers can bemade; we are talking about the grey-zone betweendouble-publication and a thin cut.

As editors of Dental Traumatology and Journal ofOral Rehabilitation (JOR), it was brought to ourattention from an anonymous source that a double-publication had appeared in JOR and Dental Trauma-tology. The duplicate check indeed indicated substantialoverlaps with major parts of the abstract, introduction,materials and methods, results and discussion, includingconclusions being virtually similar, although not com-pletely identical.

The first publication in Dental Traumatology from2004 had included 18 patients, whereas the subsequentpublication in JOR from 2005 included 41 patients.The actual values in the results therefore also differed,although they were presented in very similar formats.Only one thing really separated the two papers; in thefirst study, the authors had established 3 diagnosticgroups, whereas 5 groups were present in the subse-quent study. The question here is therefore slightly

more complex than a double-publication, because theargument could be made that the JOR paper with theadditional diagnostic groups could provide new andmore information than the previous paper.

We asked for the author’s feedback and expert opin-ions but quickly ended up in the grey-zone between adouble-publication and a thin cut because of some ofthese subtle differences in the two papers. Nevertheless,we feel strongly that the conduct of the authors isunacceptable, because the last paper would have beensufficient to provide all new information to the readers.We have therefore warned the authors about the seri-ous consequences and sanctioning of submissions toJOR and Dental Traumatology

We will urge authors to carefully consider if theyshould wait to publish their results until the sample sizeis adequate and avoid attempts to publish interim anal-yses of subgroups. The likelihood that this will be dis-covered at some point in time is big! There areanonymous groups that will have personal or profes-sional reasons to scan for overlaps in the published lit-erature, or it will be found out simply by coincidence.Both our journals have plagiarism checking tools toscan for overlaps before submission, and we recom-mend the use of this facility. Although there may be nofinal formula to determine the exact degree of overlapbetween two publications, we suggest that authors usetheir common sense in addition to these tools to decideif the cut has been too thin, or whether it is indeed awell-justified publishable unit. This is about ethics inscientific publications, and it is about our need for bet-ter research – not only more! We are determined tomaintain the highest standards in our journals andwhenever necessary to take appropriate actions, includ-ing both retraction of double-publications and sanc-tioning of named authors.

Lars Andersson, Peter SvenssonEditor in Chief

e-mail: dr.lars.andersson@gmail.com

© 2013 John Wiley & Sons A/S. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd 171

Dental Traumatology 2013; 29: 171; doi: 10.1111/edt.12049