Comment on “Tu et al., An Analytical Solution of Groundwater Flow in a Confined Aquifer With a Single Well Circulation System, Water Resources Research, First Published: 12 June 2020.”

Abstract

Although renewed interest in flow around groundwater circulation wells is a positive development, the multiple and unacknowledged republication of previously published results is not. This is what has happened in a recent paper published in Water Resources Research by Tu et al. (2020). The study repeats results that appeared in Ni et al. (2011) as well as in the lead authors' own earlier work: Tu et al. (2019). And all three papers fail to acknowledge that the same ideas and closely related solutions were published in this Journal much earlier by Kabala (1993) and Zlotnik and Ledder (1996). Kabala (1993) employed superposition of the Hantush solutions for a partially penetrating well (obtained by Laplace and Fourier cosine transforms and their inverses) to describe drawdown for a vertical circulation well. He used his solution for aquifer characterization, including the estimation of hydraulic conductivity anisotropy ratio and the approximate time it takes the vertical circulation well to reach the steady state. At the very least this work should have been acknowledged.Our modern scientific enterprise is built on free, good-faith exchange of ideas and mutual trust between scientists. It can continue to thrive only if this trust is cultivated by proper acknowledgment of and respect for authorship of research results. Plagiarism, intentional or not, is thus a serious matter, and, not surprisingly, university degrees have been revoked (e.g., Bailey, 2018) and articles retracted (e.g., Marcus, 2020) because of it. COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) (2020) recommends that retraction of a publication be considered "if … it constitutes plagiarism, [or] the findings have previously been published … (emphasis mine)." And this Journal has a long standing editorial policy defined by Hornberger (1994):"Water Resources Research does not knowingly publish articles previously published or that contain mainly material that has been previously published."Although the study of Tu et al. (2020) managed to successfully go through the review process (or its cracks), the editors obviously did not knowingly allow republication of previously published results.Let me note that I notified the authors (and the Journal) of the problem with the study in July 2020, and I postponed the writing and submission of this note until mid-October when it became clear that a self-retraction was not forthcoming. What follows represents the report that I would have submitted had I been asked to review Tu et al. (2020).

Comment on “Tu, K., Q. Wu, N. Zhang, and X. Liu. 2023. An analytical model for a single‐well circulation system in a confined aquifer with a finite thickness well skin. International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics 47(06) https://doi.org/10.1002/nag.3514. First published 17 February 2023″

“…As Kabala 4 has shown, because the governing equations and boundary conditions for flow near a vertical recirculation well are linear, there is one and only one solution to the initial boundary value problem. This holds for a well with no skin and also for a well with skin.…”