PLOS ONE flags duplicate publication concerns in Shenzhen low-carbon study
PLOS ONE has issued an editorial note on a 2025 article about public willingness to pay for different low-carbon measures in Shenzhen, China, after identifying similarities with another paper and concerns about the integrity of the peer-review process. The notice does not challenge the topic itself or present new clinical or experimental findings. Instead, it centers on publication ethics, duplicate publication, and the possibility that manuscript confidentiality was compromised before acceptance.
The article at the center of the notice, “Comparing public willingness-to-pay for different low-carbon measures: A case study of Shenzhen, China,” appeared in PLoS One in March 2025. After publication, editors became aware of overlaps with another paper on residents’ willingness to pay for low-carbon measures in Hangzhou, China, a paper that was later retracted. A further linked article on municipal solid waste management in Hangzhou also entered the editorial review frame because of content similarities and connected authorship patterns.
The central concern was not a biomedical safety signal or a clinical endpoint. It was the possibility that a manuscript under review was no longer confidential. Editorial investigators identified potential links between the authors of the Hangzhou-related papers and individuals involved in peer review of the Shenzhen article, raising the possibility that the manuscript content had been exposed during review. In journal publishing, that kind of breach can distort editorial decision-making even when the underlying study question is legitimate.
Duplicate content and peer-review integrity drew the editors’ attention
The note states that the PLOS ONE editors found similarities between the Shenzhen article and the Hangzhou paper that was later retracted. Those similarities were serious enough to prompt an editorial investigation. The editors also examined whether there were connections between the authors of the related Hangzhou papers and people involved in reviewing the Shenzhen manuscript. Those links, in the editors’ assessment, created a reasonable concern that the confidentiality of the submitted work had been compromised during peer review.
One point stands out plainly: the editors did not identify evidence that the Shenzhen article’s authors were aware of, or involved in, the duplicate publication of the related work. That matters because editorial concern about process failure is not the same as a finding of author misconduct. The notice draws a line between possible breaches in manuscript handling and direct author participation in duplication.
The editorial note also makes clear that the journal regrets the fact that the issue was not detected during peer review. In practice, that means the normal safeguards intended to identify overlap, duplication, or compromised review did not catch the problem before publication. For a journal, that is a procedural failure. For readers, it is a reminder that publication status does not always guarantee a clean editorial history.
What the notice does and does not change
This is not a retraction of the Shenzhen article. The editorial action is a published notice that alerts readers to the concerns surrounding the paper’s provenance and review history. The research topic remains visible in the literature, but it now sits alongside an explicit warning about duplication and confidentiality risks. For investigators who study publication ethics, that distinction is important. A notice preserves the record while signaling that the route to publication was problematic.
The article itself addressed public willingness to pay for low-carbon measures in Shenzhen, a subject relevant to urban sustainability, environmental policy, and municipal planning. The editorial note does not revisit the study’s survey design, statistical methods, or policy conclusions. It instead focuses on the manuscript ecosystem around the paper. In that sense, the issue belongs less to environmental policy than to research governance, editorial oversight, and the credibility of the scholarly record.
A single paper can be scientifically interesting and editorially compromised at the same time.
That tension is at the heart of this notice. The journal is not alleging that the Shenzhen findings were fabricated or that the published conclusions were false. It is saying the article sits in a publication environment where related content, overlapping authorship, and peer-review connections raised enough concern to warrant formal disclosure.
Why the case matters for scholarly publishing
Duplicate publication is more than a bookkeeping problem. When substantially similar work is published more than once, it can inflate the appearance of evidence, distort literature reviews, and confuse readers trying to track a study’s true origin. When that duplication is paired with possible peer-review leakage, the concern deepens because confidential review is meant to be a firewall around unpublished work.
The editorial note also illustrates the way cross-journal issues can emerge after publication rather than before it. The PLOS ONE editors linked the Shenzhen article to a separate Hangzhou paper that had already been retracted, along with another related paper on waste management and circular economy strategies. Those cross-references suggest that article-level review is sometimes not enough when patterns span multiple submissions, journals, and author groups.
For editors, the practical lesson is straightforward: overlapping manuscripts and connected reviewer networks require careful screening before acceptance. For readers, the more immediate implication is that published research may later be annotated, qualified, or contextualized by the journal when post-publication concerns surface. The record can be revised without erasing the paper, and journals increasingly use editorial notes to keep that distinction visible.
This case also places a spotlight on publication transparency in fields outside medicine. Although the paper concerns environmental behavior rather than patient care, the standards are similar. Research credibility depends on originality, confidentiality, and a review process that is insulated from improper influence. When those standards fail, journals have little choice but to document the breach in public.
Editorial accountability takes precedence over silence
The PLOS ONE note closes with a direct acknowledgment that the problem should have been identified earlier. That kind of admission is unusual only in the sense that it is explicit. Journals often correct the record after concerns emerge; fewer state plainly that their own safeguards did not catch the issue in time.
No patient cohort, trial population, or drug safety issue is involved here. Still, the notice carries weight because the integrity of the scientific record depends on the same discipline that underpins clinical publishing: transparent sourcing, independent review, and clear correction when the process breaks down. In this case, the journal has chosen disclosure over quiet correction, and the article now stands with a formal warning attached to it.