A manuscript was submitted via our electronic submission system and processed in accordance with the standard procedures of the journal. This was originally a single author submission, and in the covering letter the author suggested two potential reviewers.
The Associate Editor assigned reviewers, choosing reviewer A along the suggestions of the author, and reviewer B from his own list of reviewers.
The reviews of the original version came with conclusions "Accept after major revision" (rev A) and "Accept after minor revision" (rev B). On that basis, on 12 December 2008 the Associate Editor submitted a decision "Accept after major revision", and requested the author to prepare it within 90 days.
The revised version of the paper arrived on 20 December 2008. Without sending it to any more reviewers, the Associate Editor decided to recommend acceptance of the paper in its present form. According to the Journal's procedures, the manuscript is available to the editor-in-chief EIC for a final decision.
Examination of the revised manuscript led to a disturbing discovery. This version was headed by two authors, and the name of the second author was the same as the name of reviewer A.
The whole reviewing procedure was immediately halted. The editor-in-chief together with the Managing Editor sent an email to the original author with a request to confirm in writing the authorship of the revised version (this was done also because in the covering letter and in the revised version there were different sets of names). The author confirmed that the revised version was co-authored by two authors: he and reviewer A.
The conclusion of the editors was that indeed there was serious misconduct, most probably on the side of the reviewer. We can only speculate if there is misconduct on the side of the author or of both people together.
The author was asked by email to explain how the second author, reviewer A, had been included as a co-author of this contribution? The reply was that: “Reviewer A helped me improve the manuscript in grammatical and logical feature, and provided some new references. Furthermore, we share some detailed skills in the experimental methods, so I added him as a co-author in the revision paper.”
This situation led the editor-in-chief to assign the paper to reviewer C to determine if the manuscript is indeed worth publishing. The final recommendation of that review was that the manuscript should be rejected.
The editor-in-chief is asking for COPE recommendation as to the further processing of this manuscript:
• The editor-in-chief is convinced that the paper should be rejected. However, should it be rejected on pure scientific or also ethics grounds?
• Should the authorities from the author's institution be informed?
• It seems that more obvious guilt is on the side of the reviewer A. Permanent removal from the journal’s database seems to be an obvious decision. However, from other sources we also know that he is a member of editorial boards of other journals. Should we try to contact editors and inform them about the whole situation?
• This reviewer was also keen to become a member of our Editorial Board. This would of course be impossible in the present circumstances. However, should we try to inform the authorities of his institution about his serious misconduct?
The Forum wondered whether the editor has asked the reviewer for an explanation of his behaviour. Has he given his side of the story? The Forum noted that it is possible that the criteria for authorship might be satisfied by the reviewer. If reviewer made a substantial contribution to the revised paper, he could legitimately become an author. So there may be a legitimate reason for the reviewer being an author and the editor needs to contact the reviewer and clarify this. If the editor is satisfied that the reviewer is an author, the paper should be re-reviewed and sent out to a new reviewer. It may then be rejected on scientific grounds. The Forum did not think reporting the case to the institution was a good idea at the present time.
Following presentation of this case at COPE, we followed the advice of the Forum and contacted the reviewer with a kind request to explain his side of the story. At the same time, the manuscript was evaluated by an independent reviewer and the recommendation was to reject this submission.
When the explanation was received from the reviewer, it differed from that of the authors and thus we decided to reject the manuscript and not to undertake any further action against either of the persons involved.
The reviewer is still providing services to our journal and no further signs of misconduct have been observed. However, we have decided that we will not propose the reviewer to become one of the associate editors for the journal.