Duplicate and fragmented publications waste times and efforts of editorial boards and reviewers. They misguide the readers and complicate meta-analysis.

Pet review and editing may result in different articles from submission. Annals of Saudi Medicine policy as regards definition of duplicate or redundant publication are consistent with “Best Practice Guidelines”.

Abstracts and posters are not considered duplication but we do request the authors to disclose this prior presentation.

Prior publication in another language is also acceptable but this also requires disclosure. Mojon- Azzi at et al in a study on redundant publication revealed that there were 22,433 redundant articles published in seventy journals.

Gawkily et al reported that “one in three articles published in the journals of Bone and Joint Surgery in Britain were duplicate or redundant publications. Out of 343 articles, twenty six (7.6%) had some degrees of redundancy. The practice of redundant publications appears to be less than in other surgical specialties. ”

While dealing with such redundant or duplicate publications, Annals of Saudi medicine enforces five years publication ban for duplication publications.

If good behavior is ensured by the authors in future, some of them may be pardoned or this sentence can be reduced.

In some cases permanent publication ban is imposed for duplicate publication. In case of fragmented publications, either the articles are rejected or the authors may face a possible ban.

These policy decisions have been applied by Annals of Saudi Medicine science July 2005. The authors are provided three opportunities to read the statement regarding duplicate and redundant publications.

Firstly it is provided in instructions to authors. Secondly at the time of submission of manuscripts the authors have o confirm that “the manuscript has solely been submitted to this journal, is not published in press or submitted elsewhere”.

They are also asked if they are considering submitting have submitted another manuscript to the Annals of Saudi medicine or elsewhere using the same topic or database.

Thirdly at the time of acceptance of manuscript the authors put in mind that “please note that submission of this article implied that the work has not been published going before in time, that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.”

Thanks to the facilities of internet, now it is not that complex to find out duplicate or redundant publications.

The manuscript check-in procedure we practice includes a search of Google scholar. All accepted manuscripts are checked once again at production check-in-stage.

Ur experience at Annals of Saudi Medicine from 2005-2007shows that we put nineteen corresponding authors on watch –list.

Eleven authors were subjected to five years ban while one author was subjected to one year ban.

Because of these measures, the numbers of attempted duplicate submissions at Annals of Saudi Medicine has declined.

In one of the recent examples, an author submitted a manuscript in June 2006 to another journal. It was accepted in October 2006 and published in February 2007.

The same manuscript was submitted to Annals of Saudi Medicine in January. We asked the author whether he was considering submitting or had already submitted another manuscript to Annals of Saudi medicine or elsewhere using the same database or relating to the same topics. The answer from the author was NO.