Department of Research in Biomedicine and Health, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia.
Department of Medical Humanities, University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia.
Biochem Med (Zagreb). 2019 Feb 15;29(1):010201. doi: 10.11613/BM.2019.010201. Epub 2018 Dec 15.
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.
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.
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 (. identical publications in the same journal), and 159 (46%) due to authors' actions (. 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.
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.
由于 MEDLINE 索引员将相似的文章标记为重复，即使期刊没有解决重复问题，我们试图确定标记重复的原因，以及期刊是否已经采取或计划采取任何措施来解决这些问题。
2013 年 1 月 16 日，我们提取了所有标记为重复出版物（DP），分析了已发表的通知，然后就未通过通知解决的案例联系了 MEDLINE 和编辑。对于未回复者，我们比较了文章的全文。我们在接下来的 5 年中跟进了这项研究，以了解是否有任何变化。
我们发现有 1011 篇被索引的 DP，代表了 555 个可能的 DP 案例（在 MEDLINE 中，原始和重复的文章都被分配了 DP 标签）。由于无法获取其全文，有 6 个案例被排除在外。另外 190 个（35%）案例被错误地标记为 DP。在 359 个实际的 DP 案例中，200 个（54%）是由于出版商的行为（同一期刊中的相同出版物），159 个（46%）是由于作者的行为（向多个期刊提交同一篇文章）。在这 359 个案例中，有 185 个（52%）通过通知得到了解决，但只有 25 个（7%）被撤回。在我们发出通知后，MEDLINE 纠正了 138 个（73%）错误标记的案例，编辑撤回了 8 篇文章。
尽管有关于如何处理 DP 的明确政策，但 MEDLINE 中的 DP 只有一半（54%）得到了期刊的处理，只有 9%被撤回。出版商、编辑和索引员需要制定和实施标准，以更好地纠正重复发表的记录。
