This question is the result of a discussion in another question. If I publish an article, solving a problem, or finding relevant data, and subsequently another article gets published, explicitly stating that the problem is unsolved, or that there are no relevant data, what should I do?
Should I contact the editor of the journal where the second paper was published, to inform him that the paper is faulty? Would authors take exception to the fact that I didn't bring up the matter with them first? And would the right thing to do be to talk to the authors first, even if they can't find out who brought the matter to the editor's attention? Do I owe it to the editor, or to the academic community as a whole, to try to get the paper changed as quickly as I can by going directly to the editor? And does the answer depend on whether I believe that the authors acted in good faith or not?
Anything below this line is not part of my question and just justification for asking it.
Note that this question is about a specific bit of advice given in an answer in the other question, which I find questionable. As such, obviously this question has an answer in the other question. My question is whether that specific bit of advice is correct. Obviously the answer that prompted me to ask this question says so.
However, the point of the the other question is not to find out whether that specific advice is correct, and so there is no mechanism there for
a) showing agreement or disagreement for this bit of advice or any rival advice as to how to proceed (since the question is not about how to proceed in the first place.)
b) posting answers and/or thoughts about the correct way to proceed (since that question is not about how to proceed in the first place.)
So there is no way to extract any useful information from the fact that that answer has X votes: Was it given the votes because of or inspite of that bit of advice? Would people upvote the opposite course of action? Who knows. So I see some value in posting it as a separate question.
Feel free to remove this part once it has been decided whether this question is valid or already answered.
Another line: Why this is not a duplicate of Recently published paper does not cite my very relevant work: That question deals with the issue of plagiarism and asks for specific advice if you suspect this happening. The answers there advise to do nothing. My question is for the case that the authors explicitly and wrongly state that there is no research or data available, and I have (for good or for ill) chosen to take action to get this factually incorrect point to be corrected. My question is not "What should I do if people don't cite me?", my question is "If I already have decided to make it known that the paper is wrong in claiming that it offers the first, or only, solution to a problem, and am trying to get that changed, would the correct way of going about be alerting the authors that the claim they made is wrong, or should I write directly to the editor." I have edited the question a bit to make that clearer, but even with the old question I don't see how people can construe this as the same question (and could consider any answer in the other question to be a valid answer for this question.)
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