CU librarian blows whistle on publisher's duplications

By Bill Steele

It is considered unethical to republish a journal article without citing the original source, so a Cornell librarian's discovery of what appears to be covert article duplication by a major publisher of academic journals in the social sciences has dropped a bombshell into the academic and publishing communities. Philip Davis, a life-sciences librarian in Mann Library, performed keyword searches of online versions of journals by Emerald (formerly known as MCB University Press) and found 409 examples of articles from 67 journals that were republished from 1989 -- the earliest date the journals were available online -- through 2003. The republished articles contained no notice that they were duplicates.

"This is an absolute no-no in the academic world," Davis said. Libraries and academics subscribe to professional journals to receive original information, he explained. While a significant article might occasionally be reprinted several years later, it would always be accompanied by a disclaimer stating that it was a reprint.

He found many articles that had been published simultaneously in different journals within the same or similar subject disciplines, including five examples of triple publication. He found journals that shared identical content and two examples of entire issues that were duplicated.

Davis reported his discovery at the 24th annual Charleston Conference, held Nov. 3-6 in Charleston, S.C., an annual gathering of librarians, publishers and vendors. The most emphatic response, he said, came from publishers, many of whom said they would begin internal audits to ensure that nothing of the sort could happen in their companies. "And that was really the goal of my paper," Davis said, "to send a very clear message that this type of behavior will not be accepted by the academic community -- neither by librarians nor academics."

Davis contacted editors and members of editorial boards of some of the journals in which reprints appeared and found they were unaware that the material in their journals included reprints. So, "What is the function of these editors? Were they merely window-dressing?" Davis inquired. "Based on the high number of affected journals, this could not have been caused by a few rogue editors."

Many libraries, Davis found, had subscribed to duplicated journals, and most of the journals weren't cheap.

"Emerald's are the most expensive journals in management and library science," he pointed out. "Some of their management journals cost well over $10,000 a year." He said he had heard that some libraries were demanding refunds from Emerald (so far, there is no report that Cornell University Library has done so), and one individual was considering a class-action lawsuit. Some editorial board members also have mentioned that they are going to resign in protest, he added.

According to the Library Journal Academic Newswire, an Emerald spokesperson admitted that the company had erred, and apologized for any inconvenience caused to authors and customers.

Davis will publish a final version of his study in the American Library Association journal Library Resources and Technical Services next spring. A preprint is available from his Web site: http://people.cornell.edu/pages/pmd8/.

He doesn't plan to pursue the matter further. "I think I've made the point," he said. He does, however, plan to take advantage of the opportunity to study how identical articles published in different journals are used and cited. "Sort of an identical twin study," he explained.