In general, the purpose of scientific publishing is to disseminate new research. However, is scientific work considered "publishable" if it contains results that are not new, but merely previously unpublished?

For instance, imagine that scientist A makes a certain discovery, announces it to the world, and is able to credibly demonstrate that the discovery was made, but (for whatever reason) does not want to publish any details. Then some time later, scientist B reproduces the discovery. Is it fair game for scientist B to publish their work?

This question was inspired by the recent Deepseek Nature paper, which is notable for being the first published work describing a large reasoning model, even though it is well known that OpenAI had developed similar models earlier but chose to not publish. Indeed, Referee #3 from the released referee reports explicitly mentions this fact. (Now, this may not be the best example, since it seems that the Deepseek work did have novel elements that would make it publishable even if the OpenAI work was previously published. In any case the question is about the general idea, not this specific example.)

In general, the purpose of scientific publishing is to disseminate new research. However, is scientific work considered "publishable" if it contains results that are not new, but merely previously unpublished?

For instance, imagine that scientist A makes a certain discovery, announces it to the world, and is able to credibly demonstrate that the discovery was made, but (for whatever reason) does not want to publish any details. Then some time later, scientist B reproduces the discovery. Is it fair game for scientist B to publish their work?

This question was inspired by the recent Deepseek Nature paper, which is notable for being the first published work describing a large reasoning model, even though it is well known that OpenAI had developed similar models earlier but chose to not publish. Indeed, Referee #3 from the released referee reports explicitly mentions this fact. (Now, this may not be the best example, since it seems that the Deepseek work did have novel elements that would make it publishable even if the OpenAI work was previously published. In any case the question is about the general idea, not this specific example.)

Note: Here "publish" means to publish as a research article. (For example, the Deepseek paper was published as a regular Nature article, not a Nature review or perspective)

In general, the purpose of scientific publishing is to disseminate new research. However, is scientific work considered "publishable" if it contains results that are not new, but merely previously unpublished?

For instance, imagine that scientist A makes a certain discovery, announces it to the world, and is able to credibly demonstrate that the discovery was made, but (for whatever reason) refuses to publish any details. Then some time later, scientist B reproduces the discovery. Is it fair game for scientist B to publish their work?

This question was inspired by the recent Deepseek Nature paper, which is notable for being the published work describing a large reasoning model, even though it is well known that OpenAI had developed similar models earlier but chose to not publish. Indeed, Referee #3 from the released referee reports explicitly mentions this fact. (Now, this may not be the best example, since it seems that the Deepseek work did have novel elements that would make it publishable even if the OpenAI work was previously published. In any case the question is about the general idea, not this specific example.)

In general, the purpose of scientific publishing is to disseminate new research. However, is scientific work considered "publishable" if it contains results that are not new, but merely previously unpublished?

For instance, imagine that scientist A makes a certain discovery, announces it to the world, and is able to credibly demonstrate that the discovery was made, but (for whatever reason) does not want to publish any details. Then some time later, scientist B reproduces the discovery. Is it fair game for scientist B to publish their work?

This question was inspired by the recent Deepseek Nature paper, which is notable for being the first published work describing a large reasoning model, even though it is well known that OpenAI had developed similar models earlier but chose to not publish. Indeed, Referee #3 from the released referee reports explicitly mentions this fact. (Now, this may not be the best example, since it seems that the Deepseek work did have novel elements that would make it publishable even if the OpenAI work was previously published. In any case the question is about the general idea, not this specific example.)