To Cite or Not to Cite

Abstract

To Cite or Not to Cite To the Editor: Endoh et al. recently published a series of three studies that reveal the effects of hypotension-induced agents on the dynamic cerebral autoregulation in patients with propofol and fentanyl anesthesia (1–3). In the first article, they studied the influence of nicardipine (1), in the second study they compared the effect of nitroglycerine and prostaglandin E1 (2), while in the third work, they used these three agents (3). They released thigh cuff rapidly to decrease systemic blood pressure in their earlier two studies, while they introduced phenylephrine to increase blood pressure in the third paper. Although the methods they used are different, the findings in the third work are not more relevant than that in the earlier studies, because they evaluated the dynamic cerebral autoregulation itself under same conditions. The problem is that they published their works in different journals without citing each other. Because there is no clear definition of “duplicate publication of the same, or very similar, work,” we believe that authors must cite or inform readers about all their “similar works” when they submit them for publication, and they have to let Editor-in-Chief judge this matter. Otherwise, there will be many redundant publications. Kiyoshi Nagase, MD Kaori Ando-Nagase, MSc, PhD