Duplicate Submission, Zero Consequences: A Reviewer’s First-Person Case Study

Abstract

Although submitting identical or substantially overlapping manuscripts to multiple journals constitutes research misconduct, current detection mechanisms rely mostly on chance. This creates a risk-reward landscape in which unethical authors may face minimal consequences even when duplicate submissions are identified, while gaining a considerable advantage when they are not. This case study presents the firsthand discovery of a duplicate submission during peer review and describes major shortcomings in the subsequent editorial handling. On April 28, 2025, while reviewing a manuscript on occupational radiation exposure for an academic journal, a routine literature search showed that a nearly identical article had been published earlier that month in another open-access journal. Despite prompt notification from the editorial office, the journal continued with standard peer review, obtaining four full referee reports before rejecting the submission on May 28, 2025. The decision letter made no mention of an ethics investigation, institutional notification, or any corrective action. The authors appear to have faced no meaningful sanctions, having already published the article in another journal while the same manuscript remained under review elsewhere. This case illustrates how unethical authors can submit the same work to multiple journals simultaneously, wait for the fastest or most favorable review, and abandon other submissions without penalty. At worst, they receive a routine rejection without ethical consequences. These observations suggest that penalties for detected duplicate submissions are minimal, whereas the potential benefits of undetected misconduct remain high. To correct this incentive imbalance, future digital infrastructure initiatives in scholarly publishing should establish robust pre-submission and pre-review screening protocols, standardized investigation procedures for suspected violations, and enforceable sanctions, including institutional notification, time-limited submission bans, and, most importantly, the retraction of published articles found to have been the subject of duplicate submission.