β Scribed by Mathew E. Brunson; Gary L. Davis; Johnson Y. N. Lau; Juan C. Scornik; Richard C. Howard; William W. Pfaff
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
We are writing in response to your letters of March 17 and March 9, 1994, which point out the existence of overlaps in content in the articles published in HEPA-TOLOGY (1) and Transplantation (2). The letters prompted us, as authors and coauthors, to compare the published versions of both manuscripts, and we concluded that indeed there are areas of duplication in the papers. Although this was not our intent, we recognize that such duplication is inappropriate and against the publication guidelines of both journals.
The virological analysis of serum samples formed the basis of a focused report that was presented by Lau et al.
in HEPATOLOGY. As the analysis evolved, it was evident that valuable clinical information that was not included in the initial manuscript deserved further publication. Thus the Transplantation paper was conceived as a follow-up of the HEPATOLOGY paper; we feel it presented valuable new clinical data. However, we now recognize that the message of the follow-up paper was not clearly delineated from the first one. We regret that the Transplantation paper, by detailing the method of viral analysis and restating virological results, gave the mistaken impression that these were new data.
The presentation of these viral data was meant only HEPATOLOGY 1994;20:264.
for clarification of the clinical material and was not intended to deceive the reader. In fact, the paper clearly states that the results were published in detail elsewhere and references the virological paper.
We take full responsibility because we failed, as a group, to actively participate and prevent the inclusion of material that was not appropriate. We intend, in our individual ways, to ensure that an incident like this will not occur a second time.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES