> Back in grad school a colleague of mine spent nine months on an experiment in a new field and submitted it as a paper to a quality journal. Six months later,

> Back in grad school a colleague of mine spent nine months on an experiment in a new field and submitted it as a paper to a quality journal. Six months later, the paper was rejected for lack of novelty: One of the reviewers had found a paper with a figure-by-figure duplication of the same experiment -- published on arXiv a week before the rejection decision. Both the managing editor and the author on the arXiv paper were from Chinese universities. Could you clarify whether the duplicate paper was also submitted to the same journal or elsewhere, and if submitted whether it was accepted? I'm trying to figure out whether the point was to steal credit, or to spike your colleague's submission. > We wrote a rebuttal and submitted a complaint to the journal editor, but no justice was forthcoming. Yeah this is the sort of thing that seems to only ever get resolved if a public stink is made, often on social media these days, because the integrity of both the editor and the journal is being implicated, which ends up with the can of worms[0] being swept under the rug if at all possible. Of course people are going to keep tripping over the bump in the rug, and your colleague might not even have been the first victim. [0] Having to check everything else the editor has ever done for similar misconduct, potentially retractions galore, making victims whole, process improvements, etc.