Mamuda,

It depends on your interpretation of a 'tweak'. if it is 90% plus, then i would agree with Justyna. if, however, it is more a case of 'salami-slicing' at lesser levels then that is more complex - and journl editors may well let it pass.

Title tweaking is highly unethical in research. It is an attempt to make it appear as if the person had written 3 papers instead of just one. Report it to the editors of both journals if they are research journals. If they are popular material magazines, there is not much you can do.

it should not happen - if so express regret to both the editors

Thanks everyone for these useful responses.

This is a malpractice which must be notified to the authority concerned.

Report to all  such journals and lastly only 1 must remain - the original one

It seems to me that one of the outlets was a proceedings and the other was a journal affiliated with that same conference. If so, this is very common practice since proceedings have very little value in terms of merit pay, promotion and tenure. Peer reviewed journal articles (PRJ's) are the most valued intellectual contributions for faculty. Some colleges value peer reviewed scholarly books more than a mere PRJ.  

Nonetheless, I agree that a person should not be double counting the same article for credit as two PRJ's; rather they should count one as a PRJ and one as a proceedings. The PRJ should be at least 15%  to 20% different than the proceedings. This is an extremely common practice to integrate comments from peers at conferences and publish a better paper than what is in the proceedings.

The ethics of publication aside, the issue in a systematic review is to be able to transparently document the duplication and determine which article data extraction and analysis will be based upon.  Pragmatically, I use the PRISMA guidelines and flow chart to manage reporting of papers in a SR. 

At first glance, this question seems to justify outrage. But at a closer look you can see that the information in the question leave open some doubt whether it’s really a case of self-plagiarism.

The question rises whether these multiple publications were noticed at a first check of the search results for title? Or have you actually checked all three items in the original and found their identity? The review of the results from different databases for title duplicates is usually one of the first steps before one checks the publications themselves. But, on the basis of this first screening an article itself can often not be judged. Multiple publications of the same research results are in some cases quite common and do not constitute self-plagiarism.

First research results (or even interim results) commonly are presented at conferences or meetings of scientific societies. And it is quite common and justified that the same research results are presented on different scientific sessions (and even of different scientific societies). Thus, a study of periodontal disease in cancer patients could be presented both at the sessions of the National Cancer Society as well as the National Dental Association; or results relating to global studies or surveys will be presented at scientific meetings of the respective American, European and Asian societies. Here it is quite common that abstracts are submitted under the same title and the same abstract text or with only marginal changes.

Then, when the results are published as an article in a scientific journal the title and the abstract often differ only slightly from the congress abstracts. Here it is common to point it out in the acknowledgment of the article that the results of the study firstly have been presented at a conference. Generally authors will be specifically asked by the Publisher at the manuscript submission, whether a contribution was submitted already as an abstract at a meeting. In general, you will find in the article a standard formulation "The results of this study first were presented at the "XYZ"-meeting in ...."

Another possibility to publish an article several times, is given when a publisher wants this so. Sometimes a publisher wants to publish a certain contribution of an author in another journal from its publishers program (for example, if a publisher has two periodicals for a similar target audience, such as for general practitioners and for medical specialists). Then, the publisher usually asks the author whether this will be o.k. - sometimes the publisher just does not have to ask, because it is pointed out in the terms and conditions that he has the right to publish a contribution in several of its journals). Then, either the same artikel will be published in the other journal as a reprint (with a note: “This article first appeared in the journal "XYZ"). Or the author takes mostly marginal changes to the manuscript and in the article it is mentioned that "This is a revised version of an earlier contribution in the journal "XYZ".

Only if none of these situations applies, we should speak of plagiarism. But if a case of plagiarism really is present, then we should respond to each case and inform the editors of the magazine or the publisher and the relevant professional association, additionally.

As Editor of the Journal of Political Science, I often face this problem, people send you articles while the same article has already been sent to many other journals as well. This practice should be discouraged. Such authors should be reported to local regulatory bodies who are responsible for controlling plagiarism. But at the same time, journals should also speed up their process of peer reviewing and editing so that authors do not have to send their articles to more than one journal.

Dear Dr.Mamuda Aminu

Sometimes the authors may send the paper to a journal for publication and if it is not published for a long time, they may send the same paper to some other journal. But, it is also not correct as most of the journals get an undertaking in this regard. If the authors intentionally send the same paper to journals with slight modifications in the title, it is nothing but an 'academic fraud'. In this case, the authors may be debarred from publishing papers in the journals and this decision should be taken by the Journal Editorial Board. Regards