Content

• Case Study
• Redundant Publications
– Duplicate publications
– Overlapping publications
– Salami slicing
 Redundant publication: Case Study
Dual submission, salami slicing, redundant publication, or all three?
Case number:
02-17
Case text (Anonymised):
Editor A wrote to editor B, indicating that one of the reviewers of a paper
submitted to Journal A contained material that had been submitted at
about the same time to Journal B. Editor A requested a copy of the paper
submitted to Journal B. Editor B responded, confirming that the paper in
question had been submitted to Journal B (submission date two weeks
earlier than the paper submitted to Journal A), but had been rejected eight
weeks later after external peer review. Editor B sent a copy of the
rejected paper to editor A. Editor A examined the two papers and
confirmed that there was “some degree of overlap” between the two and
also felt that there was a degree of “salami slicing.” What should the
editors do now?
Dual submission, salami slicing, redundant publication, or all three? | COPE: Committee on
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Publication Ethics
 Redundant publication: Case Study
Advice:
•This was a case of an intelligent reviewer catching a dual submission
serendipitously.
•Sending a copy of the manuscript under review to another editor might
be considered a breach of confidentiality with the author, but in cases of
suspected misconduct, such action was part of the peer review process
and the information sent to the other editor would be on a ‘need to know’
basis.
• Public interest in preventing fraudulent publication overrides
confidentiality with the author.
•Sometimes authors write up different aspects of one research study and
send them to different journals, so dome degree of overlap is inevitable,
but as long as the authors openly declare what they have done, this is
acceptable practice. They should cross reference or include a copy of the
companion paper.
Dual submission, salami slicing, redundant publication, or all three? | COPE: Committee on
3
Publication Ethics
 Redundant publication: Case Study
Advice:
•Many journals have this sort of provision in their instructions to authors. These make
authors think twice about attempting inappropriate dual submission.
•What would happen if an editor requests the author to provide the companion paper
and the author refuses? The COPE guidelines on redundant publication state that at
submission, authors should disclose details of related papers. In cases where a reviewer
alerts an editor to the possibility of duplicate publication the duty to the author is to ask
them to respond to the allegation and provide the other paper.
•The duty of confidentiality to the author is not absolute, and where misconduct is
suspected a breach could be justified.
•The integrity of the literature is more important than maintaining author
confidentiality. And dual submission is a drain on the journal’s and reviewers’ time.
•The two journal editors should write “joint letters” to the authors about the matter,
pointing out why this is an important issue and requesting a response within a specified
time limit.

Dual submission, salami slicing, redundant publication, or all three? | COPE: Committee on
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Publication Ethics
 Redundant publication

• Redundant publication is not a new problem, as evidenced in a 1995

editorial from the New England Journal of Medicine: ‘Nobody is well
served by the practice of reporting the same study in two journals,
publishing a review of the same subject nearly simultaneously in two
journals, or splitting a study into two or more parts and submitting
each to separate journals.’1
• The editorial also acknowledged justifiable reasons for redundant
publication; for example, wishing to reach different audiences. Other
justifications may include a desire for a longer discussion on one
aspect of the results than is allowed in the standard article word count.

1. Kassirer JP, Angell M. Redundant publication: a reminder. N Engl J

Med 1995; 333: 449–50.
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 Redundant publication
Redundant publication and salami slicing: the significance of splitting data
Pippa Smart
First published: 09 July 2017 https://doi.org/10.1111/dmcn.13485
• When researchers are under pressure to constantly increase the number of
publications to their name, the temptation to split one set of results, or data set, into
many articles is understandable.
• Though alluring, this is generally considered unethical practice.
• Whilst not such a serious problem as fraud or plagiarism, such over-publishing
wastes the time of editors and reviewers (refereeing multiple articles, etc.), and may
mislead the readers as well as waste their time.
• Producing many articles from a moderately sized research project might give it
undue significance – something which could initially appear beneficial to the
research team responsible.
• But splitting the data into segments may also affect the statistical significance of
each part and possibly undermine the findings themselves, thus changing an
important result into several moderately interesting results.
• Such splitting of results to produce multiple papers is called redundant publication
or salami slicing, and is sometimes derisively described as the least publishable
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unit.
 Redundant publication

• Duplicate or redundant publication has been defined as publication of

a paper that overlaps substantially with one already published.
• To avoid confusion and the possibility of authors finding flaws in
what is ‘substantial’, a few journals have provided more specific
definitions.
• For practical purposes, any article that has similar or near similar
hypothesis, sample characteristics, methodology, results and
conclusions to a published article is a duplicate article, and if it is
republished without the knowledge of the editors, it is called duplicate
publication.
• The authors of the duplicate manuscript may be the same, as in most
cases, but it may also be a different author(s) publishing the same
article without the knowledge of the initial author(s).

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 Redundant publication: Salami Slicing

Salami publication or segmented publication is a distinct form of

redundant publication which is usually characterized by similarity of
hypothesis, methodology or results but not text similarity. These aspects
of publications are not objectively detected by software applications and
therefore present a serious threat to publication ethics.

Salami publication can be roughly defined as a publication of two or

more articles derived from a single study. Articles of such type report on
data collected from a single study split into several segments just large
enough to gain reasonable results and conclusions, also known as
“minimal publishable unit”.

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 Salami Slicing- How to detect salami publication?

There is no software application or algorithm for detection of salami

publication. Identifying this type of publication misconduct is complex
because salami publications do not often include text plagiarism so that
manuscripts can easily evade strict software checking. Only under the
rare circumstances of encountering both the original and the salami
manuscript can some editors or reviewers suspect salami publication.
Even though there are no objective ways to detect this sort of redundant
publication, manuscripts suspected of being salami publications often
report on identical or similar sample size, hypothesis, research
methodology and results, and very often have the same authors

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Salami Slicing: What is the problem with salami publication?

Salami publication is unethical for the reasons described further in this

section. Authors are often advised to present the data in the simplest
possible way and to focus on simple hypotheses in order to maintain the
attention of the readers. For that reason many authors “simplify” their
findings by splitting the results collected in a single study into several
manuscripts. The exceptions when segmenting is allowed are discussed
in the previous section.

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