Urgent Communication From Editor-in Chief Regarding Duplicate
Publication
On behalf of the Editorial Team of the Journal of Minimal Access Surgery (JMAS)
we regret to announce that the following paper published in the October -
December 2009 issue of the Journal of Minimal Access Surgery (JMAS) is hereby
retracted.
Deepak J, Agarwal P, Bagdi RK, Balagopal S, Madhu R, Balamourougane P.
Pediatric cholelithiasis and laparoscopic management: A review of twenty two
cases. J Minim Access Surg. 2009;5:93-6.
In January 2011 we were informed by the Editor of Journal of Indian Association
of Pediatric Surgeons (JIAPS) that following paper carrying very similar
material from the same authors was published in that journal.
Gowda DJ, Agarwal P, Bagdi R, Subramanian B, Kumar M, Ramasundaram M,
Paramasamy B, Khanday ZS. Laparoscopic cholecystectomy for cholelithiasis in
children. J Indian Assoc Pediatr Surg. 2009;14:204-6.
As both the papers are almost identical, with minor differences in terms of the
number of patients treated, this appears to be a clear case of duplicate
publication. In fact, upon tracing the timeline of submission of the papers in
JMAS and JIAPS it became apparent that they were submitted to the journals on
consecutive days.We communicated with the first author of the article published in the JMAS
seeking an explaination. As none was forthcoming even after six weeks, it was
decided to retract the article from JMAS. The Editor of the JIAPS has been
apprised of our decision and the Head of the Institution where the publication
originated has been informed of the professional misdemeanor on part of their
Faculty members. As is customary in such cases, the indexing authoroties,
including PubMed have been intimated of the retraction of the paper from
JMAS.We sincerely regret the time peer reviewers and others spent evaluating this
paper and hope that there are no instances of duplicate publication in the JMAS
in the future.