The real issue is whether publishers of scientific journals should retroactively apply contemporary standards regarding duplicate publication or self-plagiarism to historical papers. Journal publishing standards were quite different in the early 20th century. Emphasis was placed on achieving broad dissemination of knowledge and publishing in many different journals across the fragmented scientific community based on language and geographic distance. As a result, the boundaries between lectures, conference proceedings, booklets, collected essays, published journal articles, etc. became very blurred.
The scientific enterprise has since evolved to the point where it is dominated by large commercial publishing groups that are more sensitive to protecting copyright and making profits. Plagiarism/self-plagiarism is also a big issue now, with publications being a major factor when it comes to hiring and promoting scientists as well as obtaining research funding. The authors concluded that applying these contemporary standards could be problematic for “the digital dissemination of historical texts”.
The journal’s publisher, Springer Nature, destroyed the editorial that Scarlata had planned to address the issue. Springer Nature also declined to comment for the Science article, only telling Keane through a representative that “detailed information about a specific withdrawal is usually confidential and can only be shared with the relevant authors.”
Given that Planck died in 1947, they also could not get a direct answer. Both papers are now in the public domain in most countries, so it’s not like copyright infringement is an issue anymore. It is still possible to access both documents through the Internet Archive. But as Gingras and Khelfoui argue in their preprint, removing the two papers distorts the historical record. “Whoever did it, I don’t care,” Gingras told Science. “Just put them in [back] In the database. Intellectually, this is not acceptable.”
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