- Case
Multiple publication of research
We submit to COPE a case regarding the suspected multiple publication of research on four separate occasions in four different journals. Close inspection of the articles in question revealed that the author had directly copied and reused extensive sections of text, including tables in all four articles. After this matter was bought to the attention of the Editor of Journal A, the chronol… - Case
Duplicate publication
We are fortunate to have very knowledgeable reviewers who are immersed in their specialty and in the literature. A reviewer informed us that s(he) was working on a review of a manuscript and thought that there had to be more qualitative studies on this subject. S(he) began to look and found three articles not cited by the author and then a fourth. The fourth study was published in anothe… - Case
Unethical withdrawal of a paper
The terms author A and author B will be used to refer to the corresponding and non-corresponding authors, respectively, of the paper in question. The term Editor will be used for Editor A of our journal and Editor B of the other journal involved. The term Editorial Assistant will be used to refer to the person who is in charge of correspondence for our journal. Author A presented a paper… - Case
Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports
Our journal has recently been the subject of an attack of attempted plagiarism by an author from a military hospital in another country. The first evidence of this was alerted to us by one of our reviewers who identified an almost word-for-word copy of a paper previously published in which the disease being treated was changed slightly and a few numbers but everything else, including the refere… - Case
Failure to ask permission
I am a trainer and author of books on medical writing. It was brought to my attention that a chapter in a German-language book published in Switzerland was based almost entirely on my teaching. The first author is director of a privately funded research institution and the second author a member of staff. The second author attended one of my courses. There is a general statement at the beginnin… - Case
A case of duplicate publication?
A paper was accepted and published in journal A which dealt with a cohort of patients with an unusual respiratory pathogen. A similar paper had been published in a US journal B a few months before. It dealt with more or less the same patients (a few more had been added) and provided some extra secondary outcome data but with the same conclusions. The editor of journal A considered this… - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitte… - Case
An article in a high profile journal that potentially misappropriates research published in lower impact journals
It has been drawn to our attention that a paper published in a high-impact journal in the field of biological sciences (Journal A) draws very heavily on research published in the lower-impact factor journal for which we work (Journal B), as well as on work published in other journals. One of the authors of the paper in Journal B has contacted the editor of Journal A to register his/her concern… - Case
Availability of reagents
One of our journals has published several articles describing use of a particular cell line X, which belongs to company Y. The authors included employees of company Y. A reader at a university, Dr Z, wished to gain access to cell line X, and requested it from company Y. He was informed by the director of science of company Y that ‘...it is Y’s intention to keep control of the integrity of the X… - Case
A breach of intellectual property rights?
We recently published article A by author group X on our website ahead of print publication and subsequently received a formal complaint from author group Y alleging that the paper constitutes a breach of their intellectual property rights. Group Y state that the described work is based on a jointly developed concept, initially resulting in a joint report (published 2004). In their view,… - Case
A(uthor) vs C(omplainant) authorship dispute
A was a researcher in C’s lab for 1 year, during which time they published a joint research paper in a third party journal (journal S). After leaving C’s institute (henceforth called institute X), A published in the journal (journal T as a sole author). The affiliation provided by A on the paper was institute X. All of the data reported in this paper were obtained while A was still employed at… - Case
Confidentiality and consent in case reports
We would appreciate COPE Forum’s advice with regard to consent and confidentiality in the publication of case histories. Our journal is published three times a year and has a relatively small circulation but also goes to some postgraduate medical libraries, so is potentially available to a much wider audience. Our subscribers are doctors working with patients presenting with sexua… - Case
Author did not see reviews or revisions to the manuscript and did not give approval for publication
Approximately 1 year after publication of an article, we received a letter from one of the authors saying that they had not seen the reviews of the paper, the revisions of the paper or approved the final manuscript for publication. This was subsequently confirmed by the other authors who said that contact with the complainant had “broken down” and that the corresponding author had indicated tha… - Case
Plagiarism in a case report
I received a phone call from the first Author (A) of a case report published in our journal in 2005, who informed us that he had received a letter from an Author (B) of a research letter which had been published in another journal in 2000, stating that 12–15 sentences from the research letter had been copied in the case report. Having compared the papers, about… - Case
Simultaneous publication
About a month after our journal (Journal A) published a paper (Paper X), the journal received emails from readers that Paper X was very similar to a paper (Paper Y) that had just been published by another journal (Journal B). Some of these emails were sent to both journal offices. Paper X was submitted to Journal A a few days before Paper Y was submitted to Journal B and Paper X wa… - Case
Duplicate submission
An author anxious about a competing paper contacted journals A and B (and perhaps others) about possible fast-track consideration of his study. Journal A said it would be as fast as possible; journal B actually had the competing study under consideration so agreed to look at this study very fast. The author submitted to journal B, the article was refereed in less than a week, and journal B offe… - Case
Anonymous peer review – author requesting manuscript file
Two manuscripts were submitted, reviewed as sister manuscripts by the journal, and rejected on the basis of negative reviews. The author took issue with one particularly negative review and appealed our decision. We sought the advice of an editorial board member who reviewed the manuscripts and the reports and agreed that the correct editorial decision was made.… - Case
Publication of papers from industry sponsored symposium
Our scientific/medical Society added a Special Symposium to its Annual Meeting Program. The symposium organiser, who is an academic member of the Society, invited seven speakers, all from academic institutions, in addition to himself to speak at the symposium. Support for the symposium as a whole was solicited independently by the Development Committee of the Society and had no influence on the… - Case
How many “mistakes” are too many?
We published a randomised trial by six authors. Some years later, we received a letter from a researcher who had been looking into the trial in the context of a meta-analysis. She noted “implausibilities of serious concern”, including “a highly unusual balance in the distribution of baseline characteristics”, 95% CIs that were non-symmetrical about the effect estimate, and use of a… - Case
Dispute among authors
Our journal has received a paper describing a study that originated as more than one trial in more than one country, with collaboration by researchers in another country. The DSMB considered and agreed a proposal to combine the trials. It took many months to finally submit the manuscript to the journal after the end of trial. The delay in submission was caused b…