2000

Journal A published a review paper. About a year later, the author of a paper published in 1997 in Journal B wrote to say that he had come across the paper in Journal A during a literature search. He pointed out that parts of this paper were virtually identical with his paper in Journal B. Although the author of the article in Journal A had made one reference to his article, this was only to one specific point and the nearly identical sections had not been referenced. The editor of Journal A wrote to the author asking for an explanation. The author of the paper in Journal B works in a faculty of law. He discussed the two papers with colleagues who agreed that this was a violation of authorship and perhaps even copyright. He wanted to know how the journal intended to remedy the situation.

An editorial was published on cheating at medical school. The medical school concerned had allowed a cheating student to graduate. The article attracted over 100 responses, many of them in support of the decision. But an anonymous email response from two students claimed that an exam paper had been seen in the dean’s office prior to an examination and that some 60 per cent of the students had seen this by the time they came to sit the exam. The medical school concerned was unaware of this, and a much higher proportion of students than usual received distinctions. The two students asked if they should go public. What should the editors do?

A case report was submitted in which the authors described a patient who had a poor outcome, and where many mistakes had been made during treatment. The authors of the paper were from a tertiary care centre. The poor practice had happened in a secondary care centre. One of the reviewers of the paper thought that the level of practice was so poor that action should be taken. The other reviewer thought the circumstances were not bad enough to report. But the paper had already been rejected. The authors were asked whether they should do more, but should the editors do more?

A paper (hypothesis) was submitted and sent out for peer review. One of the reviewers pointed out that large parts of the paper had been published, almost word for word, in a previous publication not cited by the authors. We rejected the paper voicing concern about the previous publication of largely similar material. The authors have appealed against our decision to reject the paper and said that they did not agree with our assessment of duplicate publication, arguing that the repetitions are mostly quotations from the literature and in words they amount to around 10 per cent of the paper. We rejected the paper again. Should we have done/do more?

Two manuscripts were received by Journal X, from author A. Both were accepted and sent to the publisher. On receipt of the galley proofs, the corresponding author removed the name of the last author from both manuscripts. Shortly before the page proofs arrived, the journal editors received a request that author A be allowed to remove author B from the authors’ list and instead make a suitable acknowledgement. The editors asked if author A had sought agreement from author B concerning this change, and added that it was not journal policy to make these changes. The reply from author A included a long and detailed account of what was clearly a personal dispute that had developed between these two authors subsequent to submission of the manuscripts. The editors, however, decided to reinstate author B according to the original author listing, and notified the publisher. Some weeks later the publisher received a communication from author B indicating the possibility that his name may have been removed from three manuscripts that he was previously involved in preparing and submitting. It seemed that author B was in fact the senior author, while author A was a researcher in his laboratory. The publisher could only account for the first two and therefore contacted the editors for clarification. On further investigation, it was discovered that the third manuscript had been rejected by the editors of Journal X, but was later tracked to Journal Y (who also used the same publisher). It was also noted that author B had already been removed. The publisher alerted the editors of Journal Y to the problem and the manuscript was rejected. The editors considered contacting the host institution, but discovered that the institute itself was racked with scandal and staff disputes. The editors finally decided to reject all future submissions from both authors A and B.

A manuscript was submitted with a covering letter clearly stating the originality and unpublished nature of the work. The authors stated that the results had already been orally presented at a meeting the previous year. Before sending the manuscript for review the editors discovered that the manuscript contained 60% of the Materials and Methods text and 90% of the Results section of a previously published paper. Even the data were identical. Moreover, the authors’ citation to the first article suggested that it was different from the current work (the corresponding author and the first author were the same in both manuscripts). The editors were not convinced that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead, but nevertheless they rejected the manuscript with a stern warning to both the first author and the corresponding author. As yet no reply has been received from any of the authors.

An author wrote us a letter for publication on the importance of doing research on a long established drug. He did not declare any competing interest, but we were later informed that he was conducting a trial of the drug funded by a pharmaceutical company. We approached him and asked him to declare his competing interest. Have we done the right thing? Should we do more than simply ask him to declare his competing interest and publish that declaration the journal?

In March 2000 author A submitted a research letter to journal X, on behalf of a national screening programme. He also submitted a commissioned editorial to journal Y, relating to the same subject. At the same time, author A sent copies of both articles to B, a recognised authority on the subject. He made it clear that they were confidential and in press and asked for some information on a test used by B which he could include in the editorial. He also suggested to B that he might wish to respond to the research letter if it were accepted. B did not reply, however, but at the end of March he submitted a paper to journal Z. This paper compared the screening programme run by B, with the suggested screening programmed detailed in the unpublished research letter by author A, and concluded that the former was greatly superior. The editor of journal Z in all innocence sent B’s paper to author A for review. Author A wasn’t too impressed by the paper. He was much less impressed by B taking an opportunity to write a paper specifically involving confidential material that he, A, had shown him. He was also concerned about B knowing he was the reviewer as he had only recently persuaded B to join him in a joint grant proposal and he did not want it prejudiced by bad feeling between the two of them. Perhaps it is not necessary to add that the arguments are all to do with which particular screening programme might be accepted by the NHS. Not only prestige but also possibly income from a patented testing tool may be involved. Should the editor accept A’s view that B’s paper is poor, or should he send it to another reviewer? Does it matter, since the ethical issue means that B’s paper would be unacceptable even if a new reviewer liked it? How should the editor deal with B, in pointing out the ethical issue, bearing in mind the delicacy of the situation?

A paper was submitted to Journal A and concern was raised by a reviewer that a substantial part of the paper had been previously published in two other journals. This point was taken up with the authors, who denied any lack of originality and maintained that their manuscript contained previously unpublished data. They did admit that part of the work had been presented as an invited lecture at an international conference and that three articles had subsequently been published, but had acknowledged this in their original submission letter. They had also included a copy of one of the published articles for information. The authors had also suggested that a member of the editorial board could act as the editor for their paper because he had been present at the conference and was aware of their presentation. On inspection of one of the previously published articles in Journal B, it was found that it had been peer reviewed, and that substantial parts had subsequently been reproduced in the paper submitted to Journal A: around 60 per cent of the introduction had been re-used. A forward by the editor of Journal B indicated that the papers had all been peer reviewed and based on a presentation at a conference. It was therefore not just another publication of conference “proceedings”and the copyright was owned by Journal B. The editor of Journal A has no intention of publishing the article, but would like advice on what to do next.

In 1990 a case report was published in which it was alleged that the use of a particular endotracheal tube had led to tracheal damage, requiring the child to have a tracheostomy and a tracheal reconstruction. This paper was from a specialist surgical unit, and a letter was subsequently received from the paediatricians who had cared for the baby at the referring hospital before and after the transfer to the surgical unit. They pointed out that the baby had never needed a tracheostomy, and that in fact the child had had dysmorphic features with an abnormal upper airway, which may have accounted for the problems that occurred subsequently. This letter was shown to the authors of the case report, who replied; both letters were published in the journal. The reply was an extraordinary brush-off, which said that misuse of this particular tube could lead to tracheal stenosis, and that whether the child was dysmorphic or whether he did not eventually require a tracheostomy was irrelevant, adding “we believe that the child was fortunate not to need tracheostomy. ” This issue was resurrected because over nine years after the original publication one of the authors of the critical letter offered the journal a filler article, using this story as a lesson about the possible unreliability of conclusions from single case reports. The writer of the filler article did not give a reference to the paper or the journal, but since he seemed to be suggesting misleading and inaccurate publication, he was asked for the reference and it turned out that the journal was responsible. It is clear that the case report published was grossly inaccurate and misleading, and it is very surprising that the journal allowed the authors of it to get away with such an offhand reply. At the very least the journal would now have made the authors of the original paper publish a correction, with an apology from them, or that perhaps more probably the journal would have made them withdraw the paper, saying that the report was inaccurate and the conclusions could not be relied on. Is it worth doing anything about this now? The main conclusion is that the journal’s standards about what is acceptable in publications and in errors in publications have markedly changed over the past nine years. But should the journal now acknowledge errors made long ago, and if so how long ago?