Who's to Blame for Article Duplication?

From the editor: portal: Libraries and the Academy began life due to many concerns about scholarly journal publication. The following is an invited editorial. The concerns raised by the recent revelations of multiple publication of articles by Emerald/MCB University Press inspired a desire to offer our readership the thoughts of one of our own editorial board members. Mr. Davis' research uncovered this duplication, and here he provides us—as a profession—with some serious questions about our role and responsibilities in resisting this practice. The recent discovery of systematic and covert article duplication in Emerald/MCB University Press journals has caused controversy in both academic and publishing circles.1 For over nearly three decades, libraries may have collectively spent hundreds of millions of dollars of the academy's money in purchasing content that they believed was original. Multiple copies of scholarly articles disrupt the record of publication, con- fuse accurate citation of articles, and may artificially raise the prestige of affected jour- nals. Authors may discover that their work is associated with journals to which they have no affiliation nor for which they have any respect. The fact that editors and their boards claimed ignorance of duplica- tion in their own journals begs the ques- tion whether peer review and editorial control even took place. We may have just witnessed the very worst of academic publishing—a scenario in which commercial interests have outweighed editorial integrity and independence. At a time when academ- ics have expressed great fears that com- mercial publishers are exploiting the scholarly publishing process, it is far too easy to level blame entirely on Emerald without considering our own actions. Publishing does not exist without authors, reviewers, editors, editorial boards, and librarians; it oper- We may have just witnessed the very worst of academic publishing—a scenario in which commercial interests have outweighed editorial integrity and independence.