disputed authorship

Dr R submitted a paper to our journal and has since expressed unhappiness about the way in which our journal has dealt with the issue.

The manuscript was submitted to our journal according to the usual accepted procedures. Our journal requires that only a single author (the corresponding author) sign the copyright assignment form (on behalf of all the authors). We require that the author also affirms that all authors have seen and agreed to the submitted manuscript. Dr R was the corresponding author for this paper and she provided the requested assurances.

The paper was reviewed, revised and accepted without any unusual comment. It was published online and was scheduled for print publication. We received a protest letter from Dr M in July (several months after online publication) claiming that he was not consulted about the paper and did not want to be a coauthor. We then removed the article from our website and from the upcoming print issue, pending resolution of the protest.

We wrote to the corresponding author (Dr R) asking for an explanation, which she provided. The gist of the explanation was that Dr M objected to publication as a means of retribution, for her spurning his romantic advances. According to the appendix provided by Dr R, there was no communication between her and Dr M at the time of manuscript submission (because of the split caused by this personal issue). Dr R therefore relied entirely on Dr V (who was her Head of Department) for her determining that Dr M was happy with the submission (assurance that was apparently provided by Dr V).

We have requested a confirmatory letter from Dr V (Dr R’s advisor—the senior member of the authorship team). Dr V has responded with a letter indicating the scientific excellence of Dr R’s work but not clearly addressing the issue of whether Dr M did indeed see and approve the submitted manuscript. Dr M has written to reiterate his objection, and to clarify that he opposes publication per se. Dr R wrote again indicating her unhappiness with the way this issue was being handled by our journal.

What does COPE advise?

Professor X claims that he should have been a coauthor on one of two peer reviewed publications and the senior author on the other. The situation is unusual in that Professor X is now retired and his name was omitted from coauthorship of both papers. Professor X argues that he should have been the senior author of the first manuscript since the funds to initiate the project were directly derived from a grant awarded to him.

Professor Y does not dispute this assertion but argues that the direction of the project and the data generated for the paper do not reflect the work proposed in the original grant and that Professor X made no contribution to the final product. Professor X claims that the second publication arose from his initial contact with Professor Z, the eventual senior author on the second publication, and from his proposal for a collaboration. Again, Professor Y argues that Professor X had made no contribution to the final manuscript. There appears to be personal animus between Professor X and Y which complicated resolution.

In telephone conversations with Professor Z, I learned that Professor X had been included as a coauthor until the final version, at which time he was excluded from authorship. Professor Z did know this action had been taken, apparently by Professor Y, but did not question it.

The final resolution involved compromise on both sides, and neither party was happy with my final decision. The resolution involved a corrigendum stating:

“This corrigendum is to note that Dr X should have been acknowledged as an author on the paper entitled, ‘XXXX’ for having contributed to the initiation of the program. Dr X should also be acknowledged as an author on the paper entitled, ‘YYYY’ for his participation and contributions in the early stages of this project.”

Although this issue has been resolved, it took an inordinate amount of my time as editor, requiring multiple emails, telephone calls and involvement of the provost of the institution in which the two investigators worked. The question is whether, for future reference, there is an alternative approach that is equally equitable and effectively more time efficient.

The publishers received an email from author B about a recently published paper, which passed peer review and had been available online for about a month. In this email, author B claimed that he and another colleague C had determined the peptide sequence in question and had not published it yet, nor given permission for it to be published. He claimed that author A had access to his unpublished results as a subcontractor on one of his grants. Furthermore, author B demanded the article be retracted. Author A alerted author B to their intention to publish in 2009, to which no response was received. Author A says that the data were obtained in his laboratory in joint work with authors B and C. Author C says that the data were obtained by him and author B, and only disclosed to author A afterwards in some collaborative work.

A further complication is that both authors B and C (and notably not author A) have a patent pending on the peptide sequence in question. However, author A could not have known about this. There is clearly some communication breakdown between authors A and B, but does author B have the right to demand that author A’s paper be retracted?

Author X submitted a paper to another journal, and included author Y, a student in the same institute, as a courtesy. Author Y had drawn two figures for the paper and discussed some of the observations (all made by author X) with author X but the paper did not deal with the thesis research of author Y.

After the original paper was returned, requiring extensive revisions, author X revised the paper and submitted it to our journal. Author X did not include author Y as an author, but listed Y’s contribution in the acknowledgments. Following notification of acceptance and online publication, author Y complained to the editor, insisting that he should be added as an author by the journal without reference to author X. The editor contacted author X who indicated that author Y did not make a substantial scientific contribution to the article and that the notice in the acknowledgments was appropriate.

Authors X and Y hold similar views as to what author Y's contribution was, but different views on whether this is sufficient for authorship. The editor notified authors X, Y and the administrative head of the institute, and recommended that the parties resolve the matter among themselves. Author Y indicated that this suggested approach was unacceptable, repeated that he should be added as an author on the paper regardless of the opinion of author X and did not accept the editor’s position that this matter could not be resolved arbitrarily in author Y's favour by the editor or the publisher. Author X has insisted on publication as the single author. The editor has continued to attempt to make contact with the parties, without recent success.

The case concerns a paper we published, ahead of print, on the journal’s website on 5 October 2009. A week later we received a letter from Dr A who claimed that the authors had a major conflict of interest and implied that she should have been listed as an author. The paper we published is based on an idea which was tested in 2002 in Country P, and in 2004 in Countries Q and R. The authors of the resultant paper, published in another journal in 2009, were author C, a PhD student of author B, and author B, with Dr A as the last author. Dr A and Dr B collaborated further in Country S in three investigations

In June 2006, November 2006 and June 2007, Dr A was invited to participate as a representative of an international centre for medical research in Country R. When in the field, Dr A examined and screened patients . Dr A used data gathered in July 2007 within the framework of a study headed by Dr B. Dr A is listed as “another scientist involved” in the report from the funder and in a grant application. This application was to be on behalf of both Dr A and Dr B, and some others, but made no mention of Dr B’s study, although Dr B’s study had provided the funding for gathering the data at its basis.

Dr A’s grant application excluded any input by Dr B’s group, contrary to what had been agreed at an earlier meeting . Dr A did not participate in the November–December 2007, June–July 2008, November–December 2008 or June–July 2009 investigations.

The paper which we accepted, by Dr B and colleagues, includes data on patients recruited in June 2007, 2008 and 2009. It makes no mention of Dr A, who would have examined and screened some of the patients in July 2007. Dr B asserts that Dr A’s input was purely technical and that Dr A had no input into the conduct of the study. Dr A claims that the technique was based on her research (because she was senior author of the previous publication), which Dr B counters by saying it’s a free country and anybody can use the concept once it’s out there.

So we have a group of people who used to collaborate quite amicably but seem to have fallen out over some undisclosed conflict in the summer of 2007, at which point they drifted apart and pursued grants from separate donors. The patent animosity displayed by both parties precludes asking them to sort it out among themselves.

During review of a manuscript submitted to our journal, a dispute arose over some of the data used in the database that was described in the submitted paper.

The authors listed several preferred reviewers and also one non-preferred reviewer (without giving reasons). The journal’s submission site states that the editors will consider the authors’ preferred suggestions but are under no obligation to use any or all of them and that the editors reserve the right to approach non-preferred referees. Authors are asked to outline in their comments to the editor any particular reasons for requesting exclusion.

The paper was initially positively reviewed by two referees, one of them a preferred referee, and minor revision was requested. Neither of the initial referees responded to the invitation to review the revision (they neither declined, nor agreed, just did not respond) and as the senior author had already published with virtually all important scientists in this small field, the associate editor decided to invite the non-preferred reviewer. The non-preferred reviewer and one new reviewer agreed to review.

Shortly after accepting, the non-preferred reviewer emailed the editorial office asking whether it was journal policy to publish a reference to a database without any scientific study based on these data (the journal answered yes, citing a previously published database description) and stating “I discovered by examining this database that the senior author has used my data without permission. This applies to hundreds of measurements in country 1 and in the mountains, but also to data from country 2”.

The authors state on the database website that the database contains published data and in the manuscript that the “measurements in the database have been collected over the last 20 years from various sites around the world (references given) and are included with permission from the collectors”. The journal informed the non-preferred reviewer that, from what the authors were stating, all data seemed to be in the public domain, but advised him to put his concerns into his review or contact the authors directly, if the reviewer preferred.

By the time the reviewer received this reply he had already submitted his review and informed the journal that he also sent his full review to the senior author. The reviewer also pointed out in an email to the editorial office that the measurements published in one of the cited studies (of which the referee was the senior author) were not published in the form as they appear now in the database, and then accused the senior author of having used information which he collected as a member of the reviewer’s research group a long time ago, and publishing it without the reviewer’s permission. The reviewer thought that the reference to the paper was not sufficient and also stated that the conditions with the mountain data were more serious.

In the review, the referee pointed out three problems:
(1) unethical behaviour on the part of the senior author. The reviewer stated that he could not remember having given permission to use the data, but had specifically asked the senior author not to use the mountain data for anything until the reviewer had finished his analysis. He included the original email in the review.
(2) potential dual publication. The reviewer stated that because no analysis of the data was presented in the paper, a simple report on the existence of the database was not suitable for publication in a journal and went on to point out that a first version of this database was already published (as cited on the database website, but not in the paper) as a preprint article. As a comparison of the two manuscripts did not reveal any obvious differences in content, the reviewer questioned whether this constituted dual publication.
(3) questions over the use of a particular method. The reviewer called the use of this method “scientifically unacceptable”, stating that the problems with this method have been published and concluding that it was unacceptable for the senior author to ignore these arguments (this was not mentioned by any of the other reviewers).

Checking the date of the above mentioned email and the publication date of the preprint article, the journal realised that the reviewer emailed the senior author shortly after the document was posted online. The dispute had thus been going on for over a year by the time the referee was invited to review, but the reviewer had not declared a conflict of interest.

The associate editor, having read both reviews (the second being positive), recommended rejecting the manuscript and inviting a resubmission once the authors either were able to present the permit obtained from the non-preferred reviewer or removed all unpublished data for which no data were available.

In the meantime (and before any action was taken), the senior author, prompted by the reviewer’s email to him, emailed the managing editor and the associate editor, informing them that the non-preferred reviewer used to be the senior author’s PhD supervisor. The senior author rejected as incorrect any claims over the inappropriateness of the method and the statement that the reviewer had not given permission to use what the referee claimed were his data. As the review implies several forms of unethical behaviour on the senior author’s part, he felt the need to clarify.

(1) the criticised method has been used in top tier journals such as Science, Nature and PNAS and has therefore been through rigorous quality control. Since the reviewer’s evaluation of the method did not contain any concrete arguments, the senior author assumed that the reviewer was referring to a polemic about the method by another author, published in the same journal in which the senior author countered these arguments. The method continues to be the most widely used, cited over 90 times (the associate editor points out that it was cited mainly by the senior author’s main group, but that none of the other reviewers have criticised the method). The senior author further points out that this method is not the only one used in the database.

(2) re the inappropriate use of data from country 1, the senior author assures the journal that the referee had been asked and had given permission (an email was attached), but that if the referee wanted to retract the permission, the authors would remove the data in question. Re the data from the mountains and the email sent by the reviewer, the senior author claimed that the email had been taken out of context. The senior author had indeed asked the reviewer about the possibility to perform a separate analysis on the mountain data. According to the senior author it was this request about the separate analysis that the reviewer declined and the request had not referred to making publicly available the data that had already been published in one of the references.

(3) re dual publication, the senior author stated that a beta version of the manuscript, with a completely different code and user interface and only a very reduced set of data, was posted on a preprint server, not a regular journal publication (the associate editor saw no major changes in the number of data entries and that both discuss the database in a similar way, but thought that the submitted manuscript was more detailed than the earlier (preprint) article. Figures are not identical, but basically follow the same scheme. The associate editor left it up to the editor whether he considered a full-length paper that builds upon something that has been published on a preprint server as sufficiently novel).

The senior author finally adds that because of previous similar experiences, the authors had listed the reviewer as non-preferred.

The corresponding author emailed the editorial office offering to remove from the database any data that have been collected with the reviewer’s participation but emphasised that by doing so, the authors do not acknowledge any form of wrongdoing on their part, but seek to make it easier for the journal to make a decision.

After discussions between the editors, the editorial office and the publisher, the decision was to reject the manuscript but to invite resubmission. The letter pointed out (a) the disputed use of data in the database; (b) the question of dual publication; and (c) the scientific criticisms expressed by both referees. It of course included both reviews in full.

I am the editor of an international clinical journal and am facing a very unusual problem that does not fit readily into COPE flowcharts.

Through a reviewer, I was informed that an author had submitted a paper without the approval of at least one of the other authors. This appeared to be confirmed by two other authors. In response to my bringing this possibility to the first author’s attention, he asserted that all coauthors had given informed consent to publish the work as it is. I have requested that he provides written corroboration of this. If this is not forthcoming I will send the paper to the other authors and seek permission to identify their views to him.

Another reviewer raised concerns about the ethics of a component of the submitted investigation. The author has responded that the work was investigated by the university to which at that time he was affiliated and received ethics approval. I have requested written confirmation of this. The author is no longer at the institution at which the work is reputed to have been conducted: he quotes as his current affiliation an institution that does not exist and gives only an email contact.

Additional criticisms of the work from a scientific perspective made it clear it was not acceptable for publication and I have informed the author of this. The author has two other manuscripts in submission and I have requested documented confirmation that the listed coauthors of these approve of their content. Furthermore, my attention has been drawn to items in four other journals raising issues about coauthors’ approval of other papers from the same first author and additional concerns about misappropriation of material from the publications of others.

In his response to my request for clarification of the issues raised with regard to the paper I rejected, the author stated his intention to “formally let open further legal steps against you”. Nevertheless, it seems clear that I have a responsibility to continue investigating the foregoing issues.

The journal has no established regular mechanism for this circumstance. A way of proceeding could be, after as much possible information has been assembled, to draw together a small panel, including appropriate experts and representatives from the sponsoring international society whose task would be to review the information (in anonymised form) and advise on any further action, both from the point of view of my journal and the wider issues. In the absence of an identified current employer, it may be that the institution at which the work was performed is the most appropriate to charge with responsibility for any further investigation and action.

Is the presumption correct that, in the event of the author translating his statement about legal steps into action, the editorial team and others involved on behalf of the journal would be indemnified by the publisher?