[AISWorld] Unauthorized Dual Publication

[Prashant Palvia]

Dear Colleagues,


I wanted to bring to the attention of the IS community something that
happened last week which has us totally baffled.


On March 10, 2012, I received a message from a faculty member in South East
European University which informed us about a double publication of the
same article.  He was absolutely right. We checked and found that the
article "Contextual Constraints in Media Choice: Beyond Information
Richness” that we (Palvia, P., Pinjani, P., Cannoy, S.D., and Jacks, T)
published in Decision Support  Systems (Vol. 51, 2011, pp. 657–670) was
also published in the International Research Journal of Basic and Applied
Sciences (Vol 3, Issue 11, Nov 2011).



We were appalled by this dual publication as we had submitted our article
only to DSS and never to the International Research Journal of Basic and
Applied Sciences or any other journal for that matter.  So we contacted the
editors of DSS.  The Managing Editor of DSS told us that she had no
knowledge of it and referred us to their Publisher, Elsevier.   Elsevier
came back and told us the following:



“As for the other journal, International Research Journal of Basic and
Applied Sciences, this is not an Elsevier journal so we can rule out the
possibility of your paper being submitted to that journal by someone from
Elsevier. We would suggest that you contact the Editorial Office of the
said journal and clarify with them this matter. They can confirm who
submitted your paper to their journal.”



At this point, I went to the publisher (The USA Science Record) web site of
the International Research Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences
http://www.journals.sciencerecord.com/ and found that they have several
journals including this one in question.   For this journal, they have many
names on the editorial board but no name for an editor-in-chief.  On March
16, I wrote to their general email address asking them about this dual
publication and the name of the editor-in-chief.  I have not received any
response from them.  In order to investigate further, I also wrote to three
names on the editorial board but have not received any response.



At this point, we have reached the end of the rope and don’t know what to
do next.



I write to the AIWorld list for several reasons:



1.       My co-authors and I have no knowledge of the second publication
and completely dissociate ourselves from this second publication.

2.       Does anyone have a logical explanation for this dual publication?

3.       Has it happened to others?

4.       If there is no logical explanation, then obviously it violates
ethics and perhaps even some laws.  What can be done to stop this practice?
Should AIS get involved?

5.       What should we do now?


Prashant Palvia, Ph.D., Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Bryan School of Business and Economics
424 Bryan Building, Greensboro, NC 27402, USA
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