Analysis of duplicated publications in Russian journals

摘要

The article presents a study of publication ethics violations in Russian-language scientific publications related to the duplicated publication. The aim of the study is to assess the frequency of the above-noted violations in the data of eLIBRARY.RU, the largest aggregator of full texts of Russian-language scientific publications. For the purposes of the study, we used the tools of the “Antiplagiat” plagiarism detection system. Out of the almost 12 million full-text publications on the eLIBRARY.RU platform, more than 3.8 million scientific articles were selected for analysis. The study identified 70 406 cases of duplication of publications. In each of the detected cases, the same – or significantly similar – texts were published two or more (up to 73) times. An analysis of the most significant cases by number of publications is presented along with a detailed discussion of examples of the identified violations. A significant increase in the number and proportion of duplicated publications was identified in the period from 2014 to 2017. Conclusions are presented concerning shortcomings in editorial processes that allow duplication of publications along with the factual impossibility of detecting duplication in cases of simultaneous submission of the manuscript to different journals, the insufficient use by journal editors of means for detecting inappropriate borrowings and the need to retract a significant number of articles in connection with the identified violations.