Thanks for all the discussion input - I really appreciate the different opinions on this issue.

*) I do think it's sometimes not easy to re-phrase individual sentences (and we can not expect people to do it). And if you read papers from the same author you'll find certain similarities in their style. However, when it comes to a whole section of 300 word it's a bit different.

*) The dissemination of research is really important - and I also support the idea Sandro brought up that people might want to present something for two audiences. However, in the present case the authors published it in the very same field in similar journals.

Yesterday I read an interesting piece on retractionwatch, written by an editor on this issue:

"It requires effort and thought to write about the same subject in an original way in multiple publications. It is much easier to simply cut and paste from an earlier work. While most authors are well aware of the proscriptions against use of material published by others, it may be less obvious that self-plagiarism is an equally serious transgression, with consequences for the responsible author’s career and academic standing. There are legal reasons as well for prohibiting plagiarism of material written either by others or by oneself. In allowing publication of a manuscript, the author must assign copyright to the journal’s publisher, and obviously it is illegal to assign copyright of the same material to multiple journals and publishers. While the immediate reaction to self-plagiarism might be less punitive (one is after all stealing from one’s own work), the copyright issue is still a serious legal problem. Second, it is unethical to represent the work as original in a second publication, and from an academic standpoint, to expand one’s bibliography with multiple versions of the same material. The proliferation of journals that publish reviews, often ghostwritten, without peer review, and often under sponsorship by commercial interests, has markedly increased the potential for self-plagiarism, and as this incident illustrates, abuses are likely widespread."

And the blog author states correctly "Duplication is a problem for people writing reviews about others’ work, too, and for meta-analyses: The same trial will be counted twice, or even more times, if it’s published separately. That amplifies the apparent importance of many findings that may not be terribly significant."

Link: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/why-editors-should-stop-ignoring-anonymous-whisteblowers-our-latest-labtimes-column/

I also absolutely agree and I would contact the editors.

Because some journals tend to ignore such allegations, another option would be to post your concerns here: http://pubpeer.com/

And I would also watch out for comments here: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

An issue I did not mention in the opening post: To make the whole situation worse, one of the co-authors is in the Editorial Board of both journals that theses papers have been published. Hence my idea to first contact the authors.

I am also agree that the situation described is self-plagiarism. It is sometimes very difficult to obtain satisfactories results with a good quality to elaborate a paper. After that a researcher have to deal with all the submission proccess in a high quality journal. My guess is that sometimes these journals have more paper than they can efficiently management, with no tools to effectively control the author self-plagiarism. I think that, for now, the only effective tools is the scientific community, which can inform against this kind of practise. Like Timo Luke said, first of all is contact with the authors and ask them about this matter. The next step should be inform to the journal.

As a researcher, this practise is completely unacceptable.

What was the authors justification? As long as both journals agreed then I don't see the issue.

@Brian: I haven't contacted the authors yet - so I don't know how they justify this issue. Also, I'm not sure the journal editors are aware of the significant overlap.

Both journals clearly state in their guidelines that only papers that are not under consideration in any other journal are allowed to be submitted. However, both submissions have been processed at the same time.

Very pertinent issues involving integrity of individuals. Another point i would like to make is that editors and other staff involved in publishing a journal should not be allowed to publish research in their own journal.

@Brian; the authors should declare in the article published second that the same article, pehaps with lesser sample size or a different outcome or something different has already been published. this will maintain the researchers ethical integrity. with journals cropping up at breakneck speed, who is watching over these issues?

That's a case of double publication, a bad research pratice. There is, however, only one situation where this practice is not bad. Sometimes, when a research topic belongs to two or more different disciplines, authors can publish (almost) the same material in two (or more) different journals. But must to exist a clear statement that the material was already published elsewhere and the reasons to publish again must be explained too. For instance, a paper about research methodology first published in a statistical journal could be republished in a medical journal to make easier the undertanding.

Thanks for all the discussion input - I really appreciate the different opinions on this issue.

*) I do think it's sometimes not easy to re-phrase individual sentences (and we can not expect people to do it). And if you read papers from the same author you'll find certain similarities in their style. However, when it comes to a whole section of 300 word it's a bit different.

*) The dissemination of research is really important - and I also support the idea Sandro brought up that people might want to present something for two audiences. However, in the present case the authors published it in the very same field in similar journals.

Yesterday I read an interesting piece on retractionwatch, written by an editor on this issue:

"It requires effort and thought to write about the same subject in an original way in multiple publications. It is much easier to simply cut and paste from an earlier work. While most authors are well aware of the proscriptions against use of material published by others, it may be less obvious that self-plagiarism is an equally serious transgression, with consequences for the responsible author’s career and academic standing. There are legal reasons as well for prohibiting plagiarism of material written either by others or by oneself. In allowing publication of a manuscript, the author must assign copyright to the journal’s publisher, and obviously it is illegal to assign copyright of the same material to multiple journals and publishers. While the immediate reaction to self-plagiarism might be less punitive (one is after all stealing from one’s own work), the copyright issue is still a serious legal problem. Second, it is unethical to represent the work as original in a second publication, and from an academic standpoint, to expand one’s bibliography with multiple versions of the same material. The proliferation of journals that publish reviews, often ghostwritten, without peer review, and often under sponsorship by commercial interests, has markedly increased the potential for self-plagiarism, and as this incident illustrates, abuses are likely widespread."

And the blog author states correctly "Duplication is a problem for people writing reviews about others’ work, too, and for meta-analyses: The same trial will be counted twice, or even more times, if it’s published separately. That amplifies the apparent importance of many findings that may not be terribly significant."

Link: http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/2011/12/09/why-editors-should-stop-ignoring-anonymous-whisteblowers-our-latest-labtimes-column/

Few points different but important:

1. Copyright transfer to a journal should not mean a total sell out of all orginal work of the authors, unless they are duly paid for the articles or in proportion to the profits made by the journal. Even 30 years after publication in a journal, some journals are still reluctant in sharing the article on a good-for-all website like researchGate. Copyright should be maximum for 5 years.

2. If authors re-publish their original data with newer explanations, collations, etc - science excels - sans doing much wrong, provided the earlier paper is cited and duly included in reference section.

3. If first journal lacks sufficient circulation, and research does not reach enough end-users; then what is wrong in publishing again in another journal?

Conclusion: Science and its dissemination to society at large is more important than commercial constraints imposed on it and coining words like self-plagiarism.

Unacceptable.

It is unfortunate that people take advantage of other researchers' work to pretend they have done sometihing for the sake of science. This is counterproductive and will not make science progress. Plagiarism is one the worst phenomena science suffers from, especially nowadays because of ICT advances. I found much of my work plagiarised by students or other people. But what to do about that? Thank you for raising this issue.

It is not allowed to publish exactly or almost the same article in two or more journals. In some very rare cases, a journal itself publishes the same article twice (e.g. if it receives a Decade Award). Also, journals usually allow authors to publish their article in a PhD thesis or in a book consisting of all their articles but in these cases, the authors have to ask the journal (unless the journal's rules allow it without asking for permission). If the authors wish to republish their figure or table or a substantial amount of text, they'll also have to ask if the journal permits it (and, in some cases, also pay).

@ Matus Sotac

Matus, I think your response to the question was fantastic, great, to the point. This one particular word: "unacceptable", is sufficient to respond the question, "Publishing the same study twice - an acceptable practice?".

So, sorry all, but I must plagiarise Marus:

Unacceptable.

@Sina Mandalinci : I can't agree with you there.I would say - without any doubt mentioned above case is a classic example of self-plagiarism. Unfortunately, just after submission you are not the only "owner" of the manuscript anymore. Remember, that virtually all journals require transfer agreement form to be fulfilled before submission. Once undersigned, such an agreement transfers automatically and immediately copyright to publisher. Sad, but true...

Sincerely

Absolutely NO to such activities

Abandon SELF PLAGIARISM

Self restraint is the only MEDICINE

What if one publishes parts of one's doctoral thesis as articles? Would this be considered as self-plagiarism since the thesis counts among the publications of one's university ?

On the other hand if one revisits / elaborates on one's previous work and publihses it again,in other journals wouldn't that be a good contribution to science? I think what is unacceptable is to plagiarize other people's. work!!

It is usually ok to take a part of your thesis and publish it as a journal article (if you have not published that part elsewhere before). Also, it is ok to publish a conference paper or a working paper in a journal. Theses, conference and working papers are not considered to be 'real publications'. Still, some journals require authors to inform them if their paper is based on e.g. a working paper and tell what they have changed.

Publication- of course not accepted, if its is the same story with the same result and conclusion.. of course oral presentation in a conference- yes, the author holds the right to publish it to a journal. If the study is a continuation of the previous study, with additional results and conclusion, I still feel this need to be accepted if the original article is cited.

Of course, It is not acceptable practice!

but it can be acceptable only if the first publisher is a kind of annals or any other proceedings (not a journal), and the author try to publish an article after getting some feedbacks in a conference and/or prefer to increase value of the article.

This has been on for quite some time. Also it is common to have the same publications by the same group of authors in different journals. At times journals with high impact factor and reputation also publlish without verification. It is not possible for all the reviewers and editors to be really proficient with all published works or under review or before being indexed etc;

Usually, the journals ask for a signed declaration that this publication is not already submitted (or published) in any other journal at the time of submission. So in essence, the author cannot and should not submit the article elsewhere unless it is refused / returned unpublished in that particular journal. The article is accepted in good faith based on the authro's declaration. If such an issue is found and brought to light, it is the author's reputation that will be damaged and I think the editor may decide to publush a 'withdrawal' statement and 'withdraw' the article from their publication database itself. There may be some kindof penalization also ... depending on the journal policy.

Recently around four (or five???) journals in the field of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery decided to share the information on authors who failed to comply with this issue or were found to be plagiarizing some data. And they introduced a system of penalizing the author and that the author would be under 'sanction' from all these journals. I do not remember the exact details, but I think the editorial to the same effect was published in these journals around the beginning of this year. (IJOMS, Journal of Cranio Maxillofacial Surgery, OOOE and two more journals I suppose were the ones taht were involved in this endeavour)

On a personal note, every researcher must understand that this is not correct. Infact, the same study with a slightly longer follow up is also not considered UNIQUE! (i.e one publication had patients followed up for 6 months and the second one for 1 year).

But, if the study were to continue and the results came out to be different or some new finding came into light, it might deserve publication.

Also, if the author / researcher finds contradictory findings on further follow up ... it is ethical to publish the same too! Pogrel's article in 2004, 2005 recommended a particular conservative modality of treatment for a particular lesion which on further follow - up was found to be 'not universally acceptable'. For this reason, he published another article that 'retracted the previous study findings partially.' This is an ethical and moral responsibility of the researcher.

WIth so many journals around, it is the duty of the author / researcher to take a ethical and moral stand for self and not just be behind 'number of publications'. Quality should precede quantity in the field of science!

Regards,

Dr. Akilesh. R

India

If you look at all the academicians who are considered wildly successful they will have all self plagiarized. I will not call anyone out here but it is standard practice in health services research and epidemiology. The academic incentives are extremely toxic and set the stage for such things. What has been described as self-plagurism is less of a concern to me than cheating or falsification. When I have noticed self-plagurism, I have thought -- darn why didn't I think of that!! ;-)

Wait until you get to the grant stage and you have 10 people counting on you to fund them and feed their families. Subtle advancement in funded work becomes the expected practice or you will never make it. By the way - I have not made it.

Rightly said by Brian Sauer

If you look at all the academicians who are considered wildly successful they will have all self plagiarized.

i share my own experience of how one may be forced to do self plagiarism.

you write an elaborated original paper to a good journal, indexed in PUBMED, having impact factor.

Journal, after peer review/during review processs requests you to condence it for a brief communication or a correspondence for which naturally you get compromised in a hurry to get published.

After that you may feel some parts of the original can be elaborated and so on...

I am of the opinion that one should publish one good paper once.The importance of the paper is diluted if the paper is published twice or more. our goal in publishing should be to disseminate useful ideas, not to create a publication record. If you have 4 papers that are all very similar, it's hard for people to learn about your ideas because they won't have time to read all related papers..Scientist will have many posters/conference papers on the same topic.

I respectfully disagree with Brian Sauer's arguments. Any imperfections in the grant process is not an excuse to unethical practices. It is the same to say that if you have four kids to feed, it is OK to rob and kill...

Science has gained much atention nowadays and much money has been used in it. If researchers become more and more unethical, science credibility will decrease and all the money will go out.

Regarding the Ramana's comment, it really happens sometimes. But if you feel that have something more to say that was allowed in your paper, you can expand it, citing your original paper and justifying the new work. Rarely, you can even republish the same material. Dr Bland and Dr Altman published their "limits of agreement" in a statistical journal and then published it again in Lancet journal. But, at the very beggining of the paper apears that the paper was published first in another journal and that version was invited by Lancet editors to have a more "medicine language". Although some parts of the paper are similar, the language and the approach used were completely different.

Ethics are not negociable! There is no "more or less"! You have it or don't...

I think if it was not for competition, monetary or other benefit, no one wants to publish the same work.

Self regulation and extensive screening by Journals/editors/reviewers can only stop this menace

It is not a question, that it is not an ethic behaviour.

However, there is a similar practice which hardly differs from it but - unluckily - accepted - although as editor I try to prevent publishing similar tactics.

There are some papers in chemistry, when a method is used (e.g. spectroscopy, kinetical study, quantum chemical calculations or anything else) are correct, but always the same way is used, for each similar material, and every papers contains the same introduction, same discussion, same conclusion, same reference list, only the results tables are different slightly, because the numerical values are slightly differs for a series of similar compounds. Even the typographicla mistakes are the same in these papers, because they are made with copy-paste technique, only several table values are changed.

Formally, the results are new and publishable, but in the reality, 2-10 papers are written instead of one which would contain 2-10 Tables.

Again, the purpose of publication is no more to tell everyone about a discovery that will increase scientific knowledge, but simple a way to improve researcher's career...

No difference between not OA journals where the author pays for open access availability and a pure OA journals, if the editorial follow the same rules.

Forget everything but I am wondering why the authors published the same data and almost the same paper twice. What will be the result for the authors as well as the readers, of course, the readers will not trust the authors for this (not ethically at all). As you said, just forget, no explanation for misbehave.

I cannot find any justification to publish the same article twice think its not ethical

Interesting question, interesting responses (I vote some), but sincerely, I do not see this as clear an issue as some of you saw it.

First, what about "intention"? How do we know that the authors knew exactly that they were doing an unethical act (i.e. that one journal accepted a paper already accepted by another journal)?

In the initial post it was a mention that in a second journal there was a version of the paper published in one journal, but how do we know if in fact the authors summited to various journals (this is a frequent practice), the first journal receiving did not acknowledge the acceptance, and then another journal accepted, etc.

Normally, the authors could/should withdrawn the publication from one journal but how do we know they were alerted by the editors that the article would be accepted so they could withdrawn, or even that they were keeping any track? (there is software on the market allowing for multiple submissions...in theory, again, you should know about acceptance, in practice errors may happen, especially when you work on multiple paper/submittal, etc).

Some of you assume that this is the normal process, but I think that it is far from that.

Second, and in respect to copyright, how do we know that the journals cover the same field? (in this case, we have some competition, the "market"/audience being the same otherwise...we can discuss the topic)? Nowadays, every single journal brand as "new" and distinct from others, even if it covers similar audiences, so accordingly to what the journal says, it targets a different market that other journals in the field.

Only because the journals "sell" their content to various major mass publishers , which afterwards make content available via databases to a large public worldwide, we could detect that an article may be duplicated somewhere, but the author does not make money from publishing scientific articles (if they do, the process is quite indirect, via prestige, tenure, etc), the large publishers which create databases do.

Third, although I am not a fun of economics, I discovered one behavioral economist, Dan Ariely, speaking fascinatingly about the result of mixing market norms with social norms, and his insights are somehow applicable to this topic.

In the old good days (xix century? early xx century) we have social norms governing the world of research and scientific publishing. There was no "market" pressure to publish, in many fields you did a good piece and this sufficed to get tenure, you worked many years to produce good quality publications, etc (I idealize a bit, of course, but in general it was so).

Not anymore, the university (and the publishing industry) were infected by "marketization".

The publishing output required to get tenure is insane, there are all sort of market indicators (with "scientific" pretenses) etc.

How many "original" new experiments and papers about them could you produce in a year (assuming that you get the money, which imply grant applicants and more of your time)?

How many papers so produced are not trivial, very short, etc?

In this environment, there is no wonder that the social norms (and the ethic associated with those) were replace by market norms.

In the end, there is little value added to an author by the journals and in general by publishers (how many times, any of you worked with a development editor, for example. And what about the other editors involved in the publishing process?) and this is another reason why social norms are on retreat now.

All in all, I would say that I would need far more information than that provided initially to decide whether there was misconduct, unethical behavior, cutting of corners or something else in this case....

that the authors Timm

The case reported clearly falls into the category of malpractice which should be avoided and discouraged. Hence I repute a formal letter to the Editors to this effect is advisable.

As to the problem of self-plagiarism, I have just posted in another part of the forum, in principle it could be considered a contradiction in itself, since the author of the plagiarism actually has the intellectual property of the original work. However, one thing is the intellectual property and another thing is the intellectual honesty! In fact, the issue of legal copyright cannot be eluded even by the original author and a few right answers have already been given as regards this issue earlier on in this discussion.

It's clearly not acceptable. The editor of a journal, on whose editorial board I serve, recently sent back a manuscript (ostensibly "without review") because one of the reviewers (not me) has discovered that essentially the same article was already published in another journal. Most journals state that authors are to vouch for the fact that they have not submitted the same manuscript elsewhere. However, this is difficult to enforce.

I've seen some seminal articles published in two, sometimes three different journals.

This occurs when reprints are made, or if a journal has gone out of business, or merely to honor a celebrated author. This happens more often than one might expect. Moreover, some conferences, will publish versions of good papers in its proceedings and then give some of the conference papers research awards. The papers receiving research awards are then published as cleaner versions in the organization's affiliated journals.

One could argue that posting an already published paper to ResearchGate is publishing an article twice, if the main goal of publishing an idea is to disseminate the idea to a broader audience, for their scrutiny.

The main problem with the aforementioned practice is with double or triple counting the same paper for merit pay or promotion reasons. Ethically, the article should be counted only once as a written intellectual contribution (research paper or proceedings) for merit pay or promotion reasons. However, presenting the paper should be given a presentation credit for merit pay or promotion considerations.

I found this discussion very interesting. It raised some questions for me, one of which is this: Is the dissemination of knowledge restricted when researchers must be restricted to sharing their knowledge in only one journal or publication? Since these publications are widely known to academia but relatively unknown to, for example, management, is this an unnecessary hoarding of intellectual knowledge that, if more widely disseminated, might benefit society more? What do you all think of this article: https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/hbspolicy

Ruth,

Your questions seem rhetorical!

The tides are changing, thus, websites like this one are springing up. You should take a look at my article, available on ResearchGate, titled "Management Journals and the Celebrity Researcher Effect on Tiers." Also, take a look at "A Caste and Class among the Relative Frequency of Faculty's Publications: A Content Analysis of Refereed Business Journals." These articles are very much related to your questions.

Thanks for sharing the website.

One thing is propagating and disseminating research papers published in peer reviewed journals also via other means such as the University's repository or RG for that matter. And I think everyone can agree that this is not only licit but most welcome. Another matter is the publication of the same research paper (or very similar and reporting the same results) in two or more refereed journals. The latter case clearly remains an infringement of one of the basic rules for the acceptance of original research by reputed scientific journals.

I am agree with Mohamed A Yassin ·said , " I cannot find any justification to publish the same article twice think its not ethical"

Now the important point how to solve it ?

1. There is mainly 2 part in a research paper

a. Reference part ( That must be copy and paste to save time .... Witting other content in my words does not makes it original )

2. Self contribution

a. Modified Version

b. Novel Work

point 2 should be published only once .....

3. There should be National And International Database where all the research paper need to checked by Plagiarism software ( Only the original work )

4. Then manual checking should be done

5. If an authority failed to check plagiarism then both Authors and authority will be punished

Not acceptable --- what a person can get advantage like this or science???

Not acceptable and it is not ethical.

Today I also found such an article for first time and was shocked really!

thank u so much Tiia Vissak.. Actually this my actual case here.I have participated by a poster in one of these conferences related to my work. later I have finished the same work and I am writing a paper right now with extra results but using the same methodology..

Hello there,

Aside from plagiarism, submitting to more than one journal at a time might be one of the worst possible academic sins there is. For illustrative purpose just imagine you have submitted your work to 5 journals at the same time. It’s a great article and a few months later, you hear from all five journals that they would like to publish your article. Now you have to tell four of them that you’re not interested in publishing in their journal. This is bad for a few reasons in itself. First of all, it's insulting to the editor to say that you’ve chosen another journal over his or hers. They will probably remember this slight. Secondly, by the time you tell the editor you don’t want to publish in their journal, they may have already planned most, if not all, of that issue. So, now they have to go back and re-plan the entire thing. Other than this, next there is a legal issue associated. Once the article is accepted, or shortly thereafter, the journal owns the copyright to the article. You are going to get yourself into quite a tough spot if you have given the copyright to more than one journal. There is also an ethical angle to submitting to multiple journals at the same time. Editors are usually from academics background who have probably a separate full-time career as well. If you take up their time unnecessarily, that’s less time they have to teach, do their own research and writing, or read someone else’s work as well as attend to their personal needs. Submitting to more than one journal at a time is rude and speaks poorly about your character, it will potentially put you in a bad legal situation, and also wastes the time of some very busy people. That’s why when people who do this are discovered, they are often banned and blacklisted from the journals they submitted to for life.

Good day!

Regards

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_it_possible_to_submit_an_article_to_more_than_one_journal_for_consideration#view=58fc617fcbd5c29a9d21159e

You should contact the editor,  you should not ignore. 

dt seems to be a clear cut case of self-Plagiarism_ and _ & its unacceptance is known fact to researchers worldwide..

I wonder how d second journal processed d article for acceptance!

Anhwhich way; it is advisable to contact editors as well as authors...

I wonder, is there anything to accomplish if the editorialships of the two or three journals publishing the same article are overlapping and even partly belonging to the authorship of the articles? The authors seem to enjoy the full acceptance of both (or all) of these journals for double (or triple) publishing.

But yes, we should somehow keep an eye on these journals, and warn the academic community...

In any case, this is an important discussion in this direction, I endeavor to aspire.

@Abena Nsiah-Sefaa

It sounds like your lab head is taking a review you wrote with them, and rewriting it without adding anything new but not including you as an author. If so, that is unacceptable.

At worst, the new review is self-plagiarism and should not be published.

At best, the review is publishable, but you should be a coauthor!

You might want to ask the lab head why you are not being included in this manuscript if it is based on your work. But I know from experience that institutes are not always willing to arbitrate authorial disputes or manage misconduct, even if they claim they do. I wish you the best of luck… and if the second review is already published, then you can always have someone else send a letter to the editor raising the issue of self-plagiarism!

Good question. Recently I came across an article by an author.

Is it ethical to publish a journal article in 2015 using the same results of your 4 published journal papers in 2005 with citation of those four works in Reference section?

Researchers Sometimes do not choose the right qualitative journals that could increase the citation count due to due to hurrying decisions. Later on they feel sorry of publishing a paper in a such journal.

However, there always are roles for every journal assure you that the work submitted has not been published somewhere else.

I have seen a case like this before and asked the author and he said he took the green light and agreements from the first journal that he can go forword to any journal he like.

Following.

I am interested to use an image in my review article from source journal which I reformed completely different from original one. Do I need permission of journal editor for using the modified images? Please suggest me if anyone did the same.

You may use with proper citiation

Thanks for reply. Have u ever done this.

Dear Jyoti Kumari ,

With some simplification:

1. It is clear that you have to cite the work, otherwise it is plagiarism.

2. Basically there are two sources of copyright in this case: on one hand the originator of the figure (who had the original data, envisioned the figure, or shot the photo; can be an individual or several people, hereafter referred to as the Author) owns a part, and on the other hand the journal/graphic designer/etc. (the Publisher) who made the layout of the figure has the other part of the rights.

If you completely redraw the figure (but then, completely!) using obviously different layout then you don't use the product of the Publisher.

Now comes the problem.

(a) If the Author did not transfer the rights to the Publisher then it is enough to ask permission from the Author (e.g., you write an e-mail to the corresponding author and he/she allows that) then the case is settled. In many cases the scientists are happy that they are cited, so these rights are sort of granted.

(b) If the Author did sign a "Copyright transfer agreement" it is possible that the Author transferred these rights as well. Then the permission has to be asked from the Publisher (you will find a notice in the journal concerning this).

(c) There may be a special copyright licence under which the work has been published, like Creative Commons, or Copyright of the Crown (UK), etc. In this case you should check what this licence allows and what not. In many cases commercial usage is not allowed, but educational and/or scientific (re)use is free (with proper citation, of course).

Please note that in case of multiauthored paper the corresponding author is expected to represent all the authors; he/she signs the copyright transfer agreement for the co-authors as well.

Kind regards, Balázs

Dear Michael Sandholzer, and other respected members of this discussion, at times, when an article is published under CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0), article is available for sharing and distribution (even for commercial use) provided proper citation to article and author is provided. One may want to understand the rights under the CC-BY license for the same. Sometimes, articles are republished under the scope of this license. Please correct me if I am wrong. Hope this is helpful.

At the outset, why shall a person publish the same stuff twice. However, I believe , there shall not be any issue in publishing the same items, when the authors have substantially improved/value added/extended the former study. I have successfully done that in past.

For as long as the publishing institutions agreed or having common agreement, like the author republish the same article, no issue. Furthermore, let us treat this as an opportunity in research. And even for the victims of predatory journals, what is important, for me is the genuine data. Also, for the researhers coming from developing countries, consider their capability of publication. Salamat po.

If the second one was improved.

Legally, there is nothing wrong in publishing the same thing many times.

Current scientific morals is another story. You usually contact people only when they did something legally wrong that affects you.

Unethical in most of the cases. There may be some exceptions, though.