Duplicate publication

Articles that have been published elsewhere cannot, as a rule, be republished in Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association. Publication of an article that has significant overlap with another published work without clear and unambiguous reference to the previous article is called duplicate publication. Duplicate publication can be problematic if it leads to duplicate registration of the same data set. This can in turn lead to findings from a single study being given disproportionate weight, for example in meta studies. In this way, individual findings can have a greater impact on the status of knowledge than is warranted.

However, Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association may publish articles where the content has already been made available on preprint servers, in report form, as a student paper or conference paper. When submitting the manuscript, be sure to inform us of all the ways in which it has already been made publicly accessible.

For publication of a manuscript that has been posted on a preprint server, it must be clearly stated on the preprint repository that the manuscript has not been peer-reviewed. After publication, the author must add a reference to the published article as well as a link to the publication on the preprint server.

All submitted manuscripts are checked for possible plagiarism. The Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association uses iThenticate, a plagiarism control system. If the article or the data and analyses have been published elsewhere, we will generally not publish the article. In some cases where the author has not informed the editorial office that the material has already been made publicly accessible, the article may be retracted.

Secondary publication

Articles that have been published in other journals are not always readily available to Norwegian psychologists. In some cases, Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association will consider it valuable and appropriate to publish an article originally published in other journals, which is then called secondary publication. In such cases, the authors must have received permission from the journal in which the article was first published. Note that such secondary published articles do not meet the requirements for an original publication. Secondary publication is acceptable to Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association when:

• The author has received permission from the editor of the journal in which the article was originally published.

• Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association has received the primary version of the article and the contact information of the editor of the primary article, so that we can make the necessary clarifications related to a possible secondary publication.

• The priority of the primary version is respected by a time interval between publication of the primary and secondary versions. The time interval is negotiated between the editors and the authors.

• The target group for the primary publication is different from that for Journal of the Norwegian Psychological Association. Typically, this means that the editorial office considers the article to be of particular interest to Norwegian psychologists who are not necessarily researchers. For the same reason, the secondary publication may be an abbreviated version of the primary article.

• The secondary publication corresponds with the original article regarding listed authors, data and analyses.

• In the secondary publication, the authors state that the article was originally published in whole or in part by another publisher, for example in the form of a note. The authors also cite the original source.

• For secondarily published articles, a title will be given that makes it clear that the work has previously been published in another journal (“Summary of” or “Translation of”).

In some cases, authors fail to inform us that a publication is based on another primary publication. In such cases, articles may be retracted.

Self-plagiarism

When a section appears in multiple works by the same author, this is called self-plagiarism (‘text recycling’). Self-plagiarism can be difficult to avoid completely, especially for researchers and professionals who publish regularly. There are no set criteria for what constitutes a problematic level of self-plagiarism. For example, it is considered less problematic for the background section to appear in multiple articles than for hypotheses or problems to do so. In addition, it will always be problematic to recycle the same data findings in multiple articles unless the author refers to the findings from a previous article and builds on those in the results section. Be sure to cite your own work when presenting background information that largely overlaps with an article you have published previously.

Be sure to inform the editors of possible overlaps with previously published work when submitting the manuscript.

Editor-in-Chief Katharine Cecilia Williams is the contact person for all inquiries regarding possible violations of publication ethics guidelines: Katharine@psykologtidsskriftet.no 

The Editorial Board assists the editor-in-chief in decisions related to violations of publication ethics guidelines.