War on research misconduct

We must report a violation of publication ethics. Paper A had been on the "to-be-published" list of the Korean Journal of Anesthesiology. However, our editorial board members agreed fully that it was a duplicate submission, which was first doubted by one of the editors. Paper A had many similarities with paper B, which was already published in another journal. The hypotheses, number of samples, methodology, and results were the same or similar. Three of the authors were common between the two studies. It was difficult to detect unique information between the two manuscripts. This included all six of the points listed in the "Joint Statement on Redundant (Duplicate) Publications" by Cho et al. [1]. In terms of the temporal context, we judged paper A as a secondary submission. The corresponding author admitted it was a duplicate submission. Thus, we ultimately rejected the paper and told the authors that they were ineligible for submission to the Korean Journal of Anesthesiology for 12 months. As the author's guidelines read, we abide by the flowchart suggested by the Committee on Publication Ethics [2].

Despite some luck in discovering this misconduct prior to publication, we are discouraged by the weakness that a journal of the society may pose. We tend to hesitate to punish authors. However, the Journal is the official journal of the Korean Society of Anesthesiologists and is founded upon its member's contributions. This is not the first case of a publication ethics violation but the first one in which a penalty was given to a society member. On behalf of the editorial board, I will always fight research misconduct. I hope that all of our readers, authors, and reviewers will accompany us on a long and tough war on misconduct.

Note: Individual names and titles were not mentioned in this report to maintain anonymity because the misconduct was discovered prior to publication. We report a case of misconduct, but will not dishonor the authors.