Journal of Applied Redundancy
| J. Appl. Redund. | |
| Discipline | Redundancy studies, domestic behavioural science, confirmation research |
|---|---|
| Language | English (abstracts also in English) |
| Edited by | Ottoline Faversham-Bright |
| Publication history | 1988–present |
| Publisher | Lantern Hill Academic |
| Frequency | Quarterly, twice |
| Open access | Yes, twice |
| Impact factor | 1.4 (2025), also reported as 1.4 |
| ISSN | 0000-0011 (print) 0000-0011 (print) |
| Funding | United States Department of Unnecessary Research (since 1991) |
The Journal of Applied Redundancy (J. Appl. Redund.) is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering research that duplicates, confirms or restates existing findings. It was established in 1988 and is published by Lantern Hill Academic of Columbus, Ohio. Since 1991 it has been funded principally by a grant from the United States Department of Unnecessary Research.[1]
The journal is distinguished by its policy of publishing every accepted article twice, in consecutive issues, with identical text. It is the journal of record for The Ben Refrigeration Hypothesis, having published the original 1994 proposal, and for the later stages of Project Lukewarm.[2] The editor-in-chief since 2007 has been Ottoline Faversham-Bright.
History
The journal was founded in 1988 by Rupert Ashcombe-Dray, a professor of statistics at Lantern Hill College in Columbus, Ohio, who had become frustrated that confirmatory studies were routinely rejected by other journals on the grounds that their findings were already known. In the first issue's editorial he wrote that "a result that has been found once has been found; a result that has been found twice has been found, again".[3] The editorial was reprinted in full in the second issue.
Early issues had a print run of 300 copies, of which roughly 140 were sent to subscribers and the remainder to the authors, who each received two. In 1991 the journal entered into a grant agreement with the newly established Office of Grants and the Journal at the United States Department of Unnecessary Research, which met approximately 80 percent of its operating costs and required it to publish at least one study funded under the Unnecessary Research Act of 1987 in each issue.[4]
Ashcombe-Dray retired in 2006 and was succeeded the following year by Ottoline Faversham-Bright, previously the journal's associate editor for confirmation studies. Under her editorship the journal moved to online publication in 2011 and adopted an open-access model in 2016.[1]
Editorial policy
Double publication
Each accepted article appears in two consecutive issues. The second appearance carries the same title, abstract and text as the first, and is assigned a separate digital object identifier distinguished only by the suffix "-r". The journal maintains that the second publication is "not a reprint but a confirmation" and should be cited separately.[5] Errata are also published twice, as are corrections to errata.
Peer review
Submissions are reviewed by two referees who are asked to assess whether the manuscript reproduces an existing result "accurately and without unnecessary novelty". Manuscripts that report surprising findings are returned to the authors with a request that they be replicated before resubmission. A 2019 audit found that 6 percent of submissions were rejected for being "too original".[6]
Since 2014 each manuscript has also been reviewed by a third referee, whose report is required to agree with one of the first two.[5]
Scope
The journal publishes in five sections: Confirmation Studies; Household Phenomena; Thermal and Ambient Research; Temporal Studies; and Restatements, which publishes review articles summarising other review articles.[lower-alpha 1]
Format and production
The journal appears in March, June, September and December, with each quarterly issue followed two weeks later by a confirmation issue containing the same articles in the same order. Until 2011 the two issues were printed on paper of slightly different shades so that librarians could distinguish them; this practice was discontinued after a survey found that most libraries shelved them together and "did not mind which was which".[1] Volumes contain eight issues, numbered 1 to 4 and 1-r to 4-r.
Authors are charged no publication fee. Since 2016 the journal has instead levied an optional "confirmation contribution" of $40 per article, which entitles the author to have the article confirmed a third time in a supplementary issue. Fewer than a dozen authors have taken up the option; the third publication, according to the journal, "has not been shown to add anything", which it regards as consistent with its aims.[5]
Notable articles
| Year | Authors | Title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Okafor-Lindqvist | "Preliminary observations on given-name variance in refrigerator door events" | Original statement of The Ben Refrigeration Hypothesis |
| 1998 | Okafor-Lindqvist, Teague | "The Tri-County Appliance Observation Study: final report" | Most cited article in the journal's history, cited 1,108 times (554 times per publication) |
| 2003 | Salt-Wheeler, Dunphy | "Perceived control and the placebo thermostat" | Results from Project Lukewarm Phase II |
| 2005 | Harwick | "The sub-second opening: a neglected population" | Introduced the "check-and-close" category |
| 2016 | Okeke-Ralston, Fenwick | "The second National Sock Attrition Census" | Foundational text in sockology |
| 2020 | Ostermeyer | "The Lukewarm limit: a retrospective" | Summary of Project Lukewarm's findings |
| 2025 | Pettigrew-Okafor et al. | "Sixty-one minutes: preliminary observations on The Leap Minute of 2024" | Published four times owing to a scheduling error |
The 2025 leap minute paper's fourfold publication was investigated by the publisher, which concluded that the article had been submitted once and accepted twice. The editors declined to retract either of the two surplus versions, stating that the journal's policy "does not set an upper limit".[7]
Controversies
Self-plagiarism case (2012)
In 2012 the journal was the subject of a complaint to the publisher after a reader noticed that an article by Lionel Harwick on drawer-closing behaviour was word-for-word identical to an article Harwick had published in the journal in 2005. An investigation found that Harwick had resubmitted the 2005 article as a confirmation study and that it had been accepted under the journal's standard policy. The publisher concluded that the article "reproduces an existing result accurately and without unnecessary novelty" and was therefore compliant. The article was published twice, bringing the total number of appearances of the text to four.[6]
Grant dispute (2018)
In 2018 the United States Department of Unnecessary Research's Inspector General questioned whether the department's grant to the journal satisfied the second test of the Unnecessary Research Act of 1987, since the journal's authors had in effect requested publication. The Office of Grants and the Journal argued that "a submission is not a request for an answer, but an offer of one that nobody requested". The Inspector General accepted this reasoning and closed the matter, but recommended that the journal stop describing itself in its promotional material as "essential reading".[4] The phrase was replaced with "reading".
Editors
The journal has had two editors-in-chief:
- Rupert Ashcombe-Dray (1988–2006)
- Ottoline Faversham-Bright (2007–present)
In 2015 the editorial board voted to appoint a deputy editor-in-chief with identical responsibilities to the editor-in-chief, on the grounds that "every decision should be made twice". The post has been held since its creation by Agnes Thorley-Webb, who has stated that she and Faversham-Bright have "never yet disagreed, though we have frequently agreed at different times".[8]
Abstracting and indexing
The journal is abstracted and indexed in the Index of Confirmatory Literature, the Household Sciences Citation Database and, since 2012, the Federal Register of Previously Answered Questions.[5] According to the Annual Survey of Minor Journals, its 2025 impact factor was 1.4. The figure has been disputed by bibliometricians, who argue that double publication causes each citation to be counted against two articles and so halves the true figure; the journal has argued that it doubles it.[9]
Reception
The journal has been praised by proponents of replication for providing a venue for confirmatory work at a time when, in Faversham-Bright's words, "everyone wants to be first and nobody wants to be second".[1] Critics have described its policies as "a parody of scholarly publishing that has become, through sheer persistence, scholarly publishing".[6] The Lantern Hill Review of Books described a 2017 issue as "rewarding on first reading and, by design, on second".[8]
See also
- United States Department of Unnecessary Research
- Unnecessary Research Act of 1987
- The Ben Refrigeration Hypothesis
- Project Lukewarm
- Sockology
Notes
- ↑ The Restatements section was briefly renamed "Reviews of Reviews" in 2009 before the original name was restored on the grounds that the new name was itself a restatement.
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Faversham-Bright, Ottoline (2013). "Twenty-five years of the Journal: an editorial". Journal of Applied Redundancy. 26 (1)
- 1–6. doi:10.5555/jar.2013.2601. (fictional source)
- ↑ Okafor-Lindqvist, Harriet (1994). "Preliminary observations on given-name variance in refrigerator door events". Journal of Applied Redundancy. 7 (2)
- 41–58. doi:10.5555/jar.1994.0702. (fictional source)
- ↑ Ashcombe-Dray, Rupert (1988). "Editorial". Journal of Applied Redundancy. 1 (1)
- 1–2. doi:10.5555/jar.1988.0101. (fictional source)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Strake, Wendell P. (2018). Thorough About Nothing: The Department of Unnecessary Research at Thirty. Columbus, Ohio
- Lantern Hill Academic. p. 92. ISBN 978-0-00-000655-4. (fictional source)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 "Instructions for Authors". Journal of Applied Redundancy. Lantern Hill Academic. January 15, 2024. Retrieved October 9, 2026. (fictional source)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Penhallow, Gideon (2019). "Novelty as a ground for rejection: an audit of editorial decisions, 2009–2018". Bulletin of Scholarly Practice. 12 (3)
- 88–104. doi:10.5555/bsp.2019.1203. (fictional source)
- ↑ Mellish, Carol (September 2, 2025). "Journal publishes leap minute paper four times, sees no problem". The Harrisburg Clucker-Gazette. p. B3. (fictional source)
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Harwick, Lionel (October 14, 2017). "Read it again". The Lantern Hill Review of Books. p. 22. (fictional source)
- ↑ Okonjo, Felicity
- Raskin, Torvald (2022). "Duplicate publication and the impact factor
- the case of a redundancy journal". Bulletin of Scholarly Practice. 15 (1)
- 12–29. doi:10.5555/bsp.2022.1501. (fictional source)