Policy on publishing overlapping data

[mercaptovizadeh]

What if I have some great descriptive/observational data with some mechanism and just don't want to risk getting scooped, so I would publish this in a field specialized journal...

However, there's still plenty of mechanism to go from A to B to C, so I'd like to flesh that out and that would hopefully go into a higher impact journal. What degree of overlap is permitted by the second publication? I would have to recapitulate some of the data from the first paper in at least a first figure in the second paper, to set forth the situation and have a complete story. Of course, it would be from a repeat experiment, so it would be technically "fresh" data, but it would show the same thing.

Is this done in practice? I seem to recall that it is but I just wanted to check with others.

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[sakata8242]

If you have enough for a paper get it out ASAP. Chances are you're not the only group working on the same thing, and the longer you wait the more likely you'll get scooped. This happened to us because we kept holding back, waiting for more data when we should've just gotten the descriptive story out. If the mechanism you want to flesh out can stand on its own then you can just follow up your descriptive paper with a mechanistic paper. I'm not sure why you'd want to show a repeat of data from the first paper in your second; just cite it and focus on the new stuff.

 

[gbwillner]

I'm not sure why you'd want to show a repeat of data from the first paper in your second; just cite it and focus on the new stuff.

This.