undeclared CoI (reviewers)

We have recently developed and begun to put into practice a policy on collection and declaration of conflicts of interest statements from any individual involved in contributing to or reviewing our pathways. This policy includes members of our editorial team, and contributor and reviewer members from our stakeholder groups. We have devised a standard form to collect these statements in a uniform way, and publish the declarations of interest from all contributors (both inhouse and external), but collect and do not make public those of peer reviewers.

Stakeholder group A, who provides clinical contributors and peer reviewers for some of our pathways, has a pre-existing declaration of interest policy for any review committee member performing work on behalf of the group which does not align with our own. Stakeholder A’s review committees undertake a number of functions for the group themselves; review of our pathways is an additional role they have taken on over the past 18 months. They collect the statements on a voluntary basis annually (or as new committee members join) and it is their current policy not to share those declarations with any outside group. The stakeholder group has suggested that it would be willing to sign an annual declaration to confirm that their committee members do not have any conflicts of interest.

However, we have requested that if an allegation of conflict of interest is raised with us, we require a process to ensure that the group’s committee make the individual members’ names and declarations available to us. We await the stakeholder’s views on this proposal, but would welcome COPE’s views:

• Is it sufficient to collect a statement from the group to say that they have reviewed all of the individual statements for the committee members and determined that there is no troubling statement?
•  Is it reasonable to request a change in the stakeholder’s policy to ensure our access to the detail of the committee members’ individual statements in case of any allegation of conflict of interest?

Dr B accepted an invitation to review a manuscript for Journal A. Dr B was aware only of the title of the manuscript and had read the abstract before accepting the invitation. He was also aware that he was to return his review within two weeks.

When the review failed to materialise within the allotted period, the editorial office of Journal A sent the reviewer four email reminders over the course of the next month. Without ever replying to any of these reminders, Dr B submitted his own manuscript to Journal A for consideration. When the editorial office confirmed the acceptance of this manuscript, they also reminded him that they had yet to receive his review. Dr B did not respond.

When Dr B’s own paper was looked at, it became clear that there was a significant degree overlap in the content of his paper and the one he was supposed to be reviewing. While the editors did not feel that Dr B had plagiarised the review manuscript, they were concerned that he had acted unethically.

He had accepted an invitation to review a manuscript that was very similar to research that his own laboratory was conducting and planning to submit to the same journal. Although this scenario is not explicitly addressed in the journal’s instructions to reviewers, it is Journal A’s expectation that professionals in this situation will decline the invitation to review in order to avoid a conflict of interest.

Because of the obvious conflict of interest in this case, the editors cannot help but wonder whether Dr B deliberately failed to complete his promised review of the first manuscript until he had submitted his own work so as to delay the review process for the first manuscript, perhaps in an effort to advantage his own.

• Should sanctions be imposed in this case?
• What should be done with the manuscript that Dr B submitted to Journal A?

A paper was received by Journal A in August and sent to Dr X for comment. Dr X advised that the paper was not original in the light of a publication by his own research group earlier in the year in another journal, and that furthermore, this study contained over twice as many patients as the paper the journal had sent to him to referee. The journal decided to reject the paper on the strength of Dr X’s report. Two months later Dr X submitted a paper to Journal A on exactly the same research topic, based on a combination of patient data from several research centres, but giving a much larger sample size than either of the aforementioned papers. The journal decided to reject the paper, as it did not add enough to previously published research. The journal editors thought that Dr X had a competing interest and that the authors of the paper submitted in August might have had cause for complaint had they known the referee was about to submit a related article to the same journal. The journal requires referees to declare a financial conflict of interest and asks referees to consider declaring other competing interests, although this is voluntary. Dr X did not mention at the time he was refereeing for the journal that he was planning to submit a closely related competing article. Should this be taken further?

A member of the editorial board of Journal A was approached by an overseas colleague with a strange tale. An epidemiological study had been conducted in the community around an industrial facility, funded by a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers. The study concluded that health effects in the community were related to exposures emanating from the facility. A paper based on the study was submitted to Journal A and rejected. It was also submitted in support of a lawsuit (relating to the same plaintiffs). As part of the “discovery” process, the author, who was an expert witness for the plaintiffs, disclosed that the paper had been rejected by Journal A and he had to submit to the court the reviewers’ reports. The reports were seen by the overseas colleague. One review was detailed and critical; the other was general and positive, and recommended publication. It emerged in court that the positive review came from an individual who was working on behalf of the plaintiffs as a paid expert and who “had had a relationship with the study author for more than 10 years. ” The primary question from the overseas colleague is whether the reviewer was nominated by the author or was chosen quite independently by the Journal. Bias by the reviewer and collusion seems more likely if the reviewer was nominated by the author. Journal A encourages nomination of suitable reviewers, but only uses them sometimes, and always with another one chosen separately. The editor of Journal A is seeking legal advice about revealing whether the reviewer was nominated by the author. The Journal is also going to introduce a specific requirement for reviewers to declare any possible competing interests. This would not necessarily prevent malpractice, but it does show reviewers this is an issue that is taken seriously. This case is submitted as a reminder that reviewers can also misbehave and to seek guidance about any further action required. The positive review by the reviewer suspected of misconduct was apparently presented during the court case in support of the scientific validity of the paper rejected by Journal A. Legal advice to the editor of Journal A is that it is permissible to reveal that the reviewer in question was nominated by the author of the paper (as is the case) but without offering any comment on the case.

We sent a paper to a reviewer, who suggested that we should reject the paper, principally because he thought it “virtually identical to a paper in press by the same authors”. We rejected the paper with these comments. The author came back to us saying that he did not believe that he had had a fair review of his paper because, he thought, the reviewer had a conflict of interest. He wrote: “The individual involved is situated in a rival institute with my department and is presently undergoing negotiation to merge his and my department. This puts us in direct conflict with each other both academically and with regard to administrative details. Therefore I do not believe we have received a non-biased review of our paper.” He also wrote: “comments on our paper, most of which were unfavourable, have been cited by this individual to other senior academics and editors of other journals.” The author did not make any response to the accusation of duplicate publication. I wrote back to this author saying that if he has correctly identified the reviewer (which seems likely), then I am disturbed that the reviewer did not declare a conflict of interest. I also asked him to respond to the point of possible redundant publication. I haven’t heard from the author. What should I do now?