A team of physicists has lost their 2013 paper in the Journal of Optics after the publisher learned that the article had already appeared in print twice before.
The article, “Inscription of narrow bandwidth Bragg gratings in polymer optical fibers,” came from researchers at the Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, in Portugal, and the Aston Institute of Photonic Technologies, in Birmingham, England. Per the abstract:
We report on the inscription and characterization of narrow bandwidth fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in different spectral regions using polymer optical fibers (POFs). Narrow bandwidth FBGs are increasingly essential for optical filtering in POF transmission systems and photonic applications. Long FBGs with resonance wavelengths of around 600, 850 and 1550 nm were inscribed in several types of polymer optical fibers using a scanning technique with a short optical path. The technique allowed the inscription in relatively short periods of time. The achieved 3 dB bandwidth varied from 0.22 down to 0.045 nm considering FBG lengths of 10 and 25 mm, respectively.
According to the retraction notice:
It has come to the attention of IOP Publishing that this article should not have been submitted for publication owing to its substantial replication of a paper published in parallel . Similar material is also presented in a conference paper . The Journal of Optics article was submitted by Carlos A F Marques without the knowledge of the other authors.
The two references are to:
1. Marques C A F, Bilro L B, Alberto N J, Webb D J and Nogueira R N 2013 Narrow bandwidth Bragg gratings imprinted in polymer optical fibers for different spectral windows Opt. Commun. 307 57–61
2. Marques C A F, Bilro L, Webb D J and Nogueira R N 2013 Inscription of narrow bandwidth Bragg gratings in polymer optical fibers Proc. SPIE 8794 879421 12040-8978/13/129701
The abstract for the Optics Communications article reads thusly:
The production and characterization of narrow bandwidth fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in different spectral regions using polymer optical fibers (POFs) is reported. Narrow bandwidth FBGs are increasingly important for POF transmission systems, WDM technology and sensing applications. Long FBGs with resonance wavelength around 600-nm, 850-nm and 1550-nm in several types of polymer optical fibers were inscribed using a scanning technique with a short optical path. The technique allowed the inscription in relative short periods of time. The obtained 3-dB bandwidth varies from 0.22 down to 0.045 nm considering a Bragg grating length between 10 and 25-mm, respectively.
According to the notes, the article was received April 10, 2013, revised May 8, accepted May 30 and on the web June 24.
Meaning Marques had a busy spring, because the retracted article was received April 9, accepted May 29 and published June 20.
According to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, the retraction notice is the only citation of any of the related papers.