einstein (São Paulo). 01/Oct/2014;12(4):7-8.

Scientific misconduct: our first (known) case

DOI: 10.1590/S1679-45082014ED3296

einstein registered (in the last issue) its first retraction, due to a case of duplicate publication: “Neuromuscular electrical stimulation in critically ill patients in the intensive care unit: a systematic review”, by Lucas Lima Ferreira, Luiz Carlos Marques Vanderlei and Vitor Engrácia Valenti. Our journal, like all peer-reviewed and indexed journals, asks authors to state unequivocally in their submission letter that the paper has not already been submitted to another journal. This letter is signed by all the authors, so we take this affirmation as a fact. In this case this fact was fiction…

Scientific misconduct has many faces: duplicate publication is perhaps the easiest to discover. It was more common in the past when some so-called scientists, pressured for publications (“publish or perish”), sought little-known journals in non-English languages and tried to submit papers to several journals at once. As indexing and searching systems improved, this practice became more and more difficult. A comprehensive analysis of retracted articles in the medical literature between 2004 and 2013⁽⁾ showed an increase in numbers of retracted articles in recent years. Most of these retractions are original articles followed by case reports.

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