Ingelfinger rule

The Ingelfinger rule is an eponymous rule named after Franz J. Ingelfinger, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) editor-in-chief who enunciated it in 1969. The rule, as originally articulated in the editorial "Definition of 'Sole Contribution'",{{cite journal | vauthors = | title = Definition of 'sole contribution' | journal = New England Journal of Medicine | volume = 281 | issue = 12 | pages = 676–677| date = September 1969 | doi =10.1056/NEJM196909182811208 |PMID = 5807917 | URL= https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJM196909182811208}} Note: Though written by Ingelfinger, this editorial was published anonymously. stated that NEJM would not publish findings that had been published elsewhere. Though originally meant only for NEJM, the guideline was subsequently adopted by several other scientific journals, and it has shaped scientific publishing ever since.

{{cite journal

|last1=Marshall |first1=E

|year=1998

|title=Franz Ingelfinger's Legacy Shaped Biology Publishing

|journal=Science

|volume=282 |issue=5390 |pages=861–3, 865–7

|doi=10.1126/science.282.5390.861

|doi-access=free

|pmid=9841429

}} Historically it has also helped to ensure that the journal's content is fresh and does not duplicate content previously reported elsewhere,{{cite web

|date=13 June 2000

|title=Ingelfinger rule definition

|url=http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13488

|publisher=Medicine.net

|access-date=2011-08-20

|archive-date=2014-07-11

|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140711164954/http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=13488

|url-status=dead

}} and it seeks to protect the scientific embargo system.

{{cite web

|last=Schachtman |first=NA

|date=20 June 2014

|title=Selective Leaking — Breaking Ingelfinger's Rule

|url=http://schachtmanlaw.com/selective-leaking-breaking-ingelfingers-rule/

|work=Schachtman Law Blog

|access-date=2015-05-23

}}

A similar policy had been earlier expressed in 1960 by Samuel Goudsmit, editor of the Physical Review Letters, but it did not become as well known.

{{cite journal

|last=Lewenstein |first=BV

|year=1988

|title=It's Not Really the Relman Rule

|journal=ScienceWriters

|volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=17–18

}}

The Ingelfinger rule has been seen as having the aim of preventing authors from performing duplicate publications which would unduly inflate their publication record.

{{cite arXiv

|last1=Lariviere |first1=V

|last2=Gingras |first2=Y

|year=2009

|title=On the prevalence and scientific impact of duplicate publications in different scientific fields (1980-2007)

|eprint=0906.4019

|class=physics.soc-ph

}} On the other hand, it has also been stated that the real reason for the Ingelfinger rule is to protect the journals' revenue stream, and with the increase in popularity of preprint servers {{Cite journal|last1=Heidary|first1=Fatemeh|last2=Gharebaghi|first2=Reza|date=2021-05-31|title=COVID-19 impact on research and publication ethics|journal=Medical Hypothesis, Discovery & Innovation in Ophthalmology|language=en|volume=10|issue=1|pages=1–4|doi=10.51329/mehdiophthal1414|s2cid=236407601|doi-access=free|pmid=37641621 |pmc=10460218}} such as arXiv, bioRxiv, and HAL many journals have loosened their requirements concerning the Ingelfinger rule.

{{cite book

|last=Borgman |first=CL

|year=2007

|title=Scholarship in the digital age: information, infrastructure, and the Internet

|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZDDu3CuzDdMC&pg=PA99

|page=99

|publisher=MIT Press

|isbn=978-0-262-02619-2

}} In a defense of the policy, the journal said in an editorial that the practice discouraged scientists from talking to the media before their work was peer reviewed.

{{cite journal

|last1=Angell |first1=M

|last2=Kassirer |first2=J

|date=1991

|title=The Ingelfinger Rule Revisited

|journal=The New England Journal of Medicine

|volume=325 |issue=19

|pages=1371–1373

|doi=10.1056/NEJM199111073251910

|doi-access=free

|pmid=1669838

}}