The problem identified here may be common to many journals.
The policing of plagiarism and duplication is the responsibility of the editors, and if the editors don’t do anything then plagiarism and duplications can remain in the literature. (It would seem that many publishers aren’t using anti-plagiarism software as a cross check.)
An interesting example is provided by Shepard et al. (2013, DOI 10.1007/s11069-012-0368-1), who identified a clear example of duplication (“the analysis, text and figures are basically a reproduction of a comment that he has provided previously to a completely different study”). While Shepard et al. clearly flagged the duplicated comments and the editors of the journals (published by Springer and Elsevier) must be aware of the duplication, the relevant publications by Boretti remain in the literature.
