- 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… - Case
Author’s name removed from submitted article
A week after receiving a paper on a study for consideration for publication, the Editor received an email from person X claiming to have been the principal investigator of the study for the previous five years, up until he recently parted company in acrimonious circumstances from the hospital Trust in receipt of the NHS R&D funding for the study. Person X sent supporting evidence of his… - Case
Paper submitted by a PR company without the knowledge of the authors
…had given permission for their name to be attached to the paper, asked who was the corresponding author, and also if they wished to declare any conflict of interest. This produced a very interesting flurry. One author said the paper had been produced as a result of a seminar to which he and the other contributing authors had been invited. He himself believed that he was simply giving advice to the… - Case
Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest
The editor in chief received a letter to the editor criticising a paper published earlier in the journal. The editor first told the author of the letter that he would publish the commentary after he had given the authors of the criticised paper a chance to respond. When asked by the author of the letter, he later added that he would also publish the letter if the authors failed to respond. - Case
The author not affiliated to an institution
A contribution about training in family medicine training was published in a journal. Subsequently, a letter from the chairman of the department of family medicine at the university with which the author claimed to have been affiliated, said that the author did not work there. The author was asked for an explanation. He replied that he had done it involuntarily and that he would be happy for… - Case
An attempt to bribe an editor
…its behalf. One of the members relayed how in a similar circumstance he had complained to the drug company which had withdrawn its contract with the offending PR company.… - Case
The double review
…Journal B published its review in March 1998. The editor of journal A saw this paper and contacted the author. The author claimed that during negotiations in 1997, journal A had led him to believe that his review was not acceptable for publication.He had then contacted journal B. In January 1998,the author,realising that he should inform journal B about the paper with journal A, sent a letter to… - Case
The incomplete retraction
…of the authors wrote to the journal expressing concern that no fuller explanation had been offered. He suggested that he was innocent and that one of the authors of the paper was clearly guilty. He said that the retraction did not make clear whether all the authors were equally guilty, and he wanted a retraction published that put this to rights. What should be done next?… - Case
WAME case
This case was posted on the WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) list-serv and the editor (from India) asked whether COPE could provide guidance. An author (who happens to also be a journal editor) submitted a manuscript to a journal listed in one of the major medical databases. Having heard nothing for several months he tried to contact the editor to discover what was happening.… - Case
Authors bearing gifts …
The editor of an international journal is bothered: he has received a gift that looks expensive, though it might not be. The sender is an author of a paper submitted to the journal; he has just received a “major revisions necessary” decision. In previous emails, the author has suggested hosting the editor in “his native beautiful city”, an invitation the editor has acknowledged, saying… - Case
Competing interest
An editorial board member of a journal submitted an unsolicited review article on a drug. The editor said the journal would consider the article, but suspected that the article had been commissioned or even written by a drugs company. S/he stipulated that the author must provide a financial disclosure statement before the article could be accepted. The journal published the review article,… - Case
Supervisor publishes PhD students work
The PhD supervisor and a co-supervisor published a paper. The paper contained the work of a PhD student; approximately 90% of the paper was from the thesis. The PhD student found out when the paper was electronically pre-published. He contacted the supervisor. The supervisor’s first reaction was “How did you find out”? The supervisor did not want to include the PhD student as an author since… - Case
Retraction or expression of concern?
…where his studies were reportedly carried out. We were satisfied that the data presented in the short report were real and the author’s own, and there was no evidence of data fabrication or theft. We asked for expert opinion on author A’s interpretation of the image. Three experts thought that the author could not draw the conclusions he had based on the scan he presented in the publication and… - Case
Who ensures the integrity of the editor?
An editor came across a letter from the editor-in-chief of his journal to a reviewer that asserted he had recommended the acceptance of a manuscript. He had in fact recommended the opposite, both verbally and in writing. The paper in question was a guideline on the therapeutic choices for a relatively common medical condition. The authors had claimed their conclusions and therapeutic… - News
Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors Convention, China, 2019
Trevor Lane, COPE Council Member, was invited to represent COPE at the 2019 Convention of the Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME) in Xi’an, China, on 4-5 September 2019. On the first day, he delivered a keynote speech in a session on publication ethics and on the second day, he chaired a parallel session on journal evaluation. - Case
The undeclared competing interest
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… - Case
The tortuous tale of a paper, a letter and an editorial
Dr A submitted an article to journal X that was published in 1996. Dr B wrote to the editor in January 1997, pointing out an error by Dr A. Shortly afterwards, Dr B submitted a longer editorial to the journal discussing the issue raised by this error in a much wider context. Dr B then withdrew the article and submitted it to journal Y at the end of March, with a covering letter in which he… - Case
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
An associate editor handling a paper for this journal reported to the editor-in-chief that he had not yet been able to recruit a single reviewer—all those who have been contacted had declined or not responded. The paper is in scope for the journal, it seems of reasonably quality from a brief read and the associate editor is appropriate; but this is a small and specialised field, and finding… - Case
Unethical research undertaken by a single handed GP
We have received a paper from a GP testing the hypotheses that because 24,25 cholecalciferol has a similar structure to commercially available statins, it may act as an inhibitor of HMA co-reductase. He screened 350 patients in his practice and identified 77 who had a cholesterol concentration above 6.5 mmol per litre. Thirty-three of them agreed to return for a second test 2 weeks later. They… - Case
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
…author B and author C (both PhD students under the director's supervision) were listed as coauthors without their knowledge. Additionally, he claimed that author D (author A's supervisor at his primary affiliation) was not in any way involved in the research described in the article and should be removed from the authors list. The director stated that he wishes for the article to be withdrawn.