Redundant publications in surgery: a threat to patient safety?

Philip F Stahel¹ , Pierre-Alain Clavien² , Wade R Smith¹ and Ernest E Moore³

¹Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Denver Health Medical Center, University of Colorado School of Medicine, 777 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80204, USA

²Department of Visceral Surgery, University Hospital Zurich, Ramistr. 100, CH-8091 Zurich, Switzerland

³Department of Surgery, Denver Health Medical Center, University of Colorado, School of Medicine, 777 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80204, USA

author email corresponding author email

Patient Safety in Surgery 2008, 2:6doi:10.1186/1754-9493-2-6


Published:	19 March 2008

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

A redundant publication is a manuscript which fundamentally presents results from the same study in more than one original paper. This term is synonymous with a "dual" or "duplicate" publication of identical data (so-called "self plagiarism") and with the disaggregated presentation of identical data in multiple publications derived from the same study (so-called "salami slicing science"), published by the same author or group. Hereby, the content of redundant papers may overlap in part or completely, such that the main findings of an original study are published in multiple papers in different electronic or print journals.