The Editors welcome topical correspondence from readers relating to articles published in the Journal. Responses should be sent electronically via the BJS website (www.bjs.co.uk). All letters will be reviewed and, if approved, appear on the website. A selection of these will be edited and published in the Journal. Letters must be no more than 250 words in length.
A tale of three papers (Br J Surg 2006; 93: 1560-1562)
Sir
We inhabit a surgical world where there is intense pressure to publish and in which publication is viewed as a marker of success. However, the unfortunate tale, referred to in your editorial statement, should act as a warning to all authors, irrespective of their surgical discipline, that they bear ultimate responsibility for ensuring the originality of submitted manuscripts.
Dr Schmidt states in his response that the two submitted manuscripts were originally completely different and that following revisions suggested by journal reviewers 'the numbers overlapped somehow'. The three papers concerned had a total of seven authors, three of whom are listed on all three papers and more importantly the first author on both English language publications is the same. This is not a large group and would thus suggest that the potential for overlap should have been picked up prior to re-submission of the BJS paper.
We believe that Dr Schmidt should not have brought the review process into his response. Reviewers have a difficult task to perform. One of their responsibilities is to suggest improvements which they feel will improve a paper's impact. In this case, it is noteworthy that the independent reviews of both English language papers focused on essentially the same group of patients. This suggests that this is where the true value of the work lies.
How authors implement reviewers' suggestions is the authors' responsibility and it is they and they alone who can prevent 'redundant submissions'.