We recently received a complaint about an article which was published in our journal, which was originally sent to Journal X and copied to us. The complainant claimed that they had submitted an article to Journal X which was rejected. They alleged that their ideas and data had been leaked, stolen by another group of researchers, and published in our journal.
We have asked the authors and complainant to provide supplementary and raw data and images to support their claim. The complainant provided some rough data written in a notebook and some handmade graphs (not dated), which do not relate to the drug under investigation in the published papers. The complainant claimed that the authors simply changed the drug name, however, the authors reiterated that the work is their original work and claimed that the complainant has a ‘malicious intent’.
Our subject editor along with a senior researcher working in the field checked the entire case and compared the published article with the materials provided by the complainant. The editors reported that the idea of the study and the data had similarities but that they were not identical. Furthermore, the fact that the data were handwritten and undated laboratory experiment entries made it difficult to determine who did the work first.
We have also written to Journal X to check if any of the authors of the published article were involved in the peer-review or editorial process of the journal when the complainant submitted the article to their journal, but unfortunately received no response to the date.
Question for COPE Council
- What would COPE advise we do next?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
Although this case is presented in terms of the dispute between authors in fact it seems that the key issue is over alleged plagiarism of ideas or method. The approach the journal should take therefore devolves on two issues: first the evidence for ‘theft’; and second, the nature of any prior contact between the two author/author groups which could explain how the ideas could have been accessed.
On the first point, it does not appear as though any definite proof has been found to support theft of notes or ideas. The journal has little to go on here, so we recommend referring this matter to the authors’ institution. The authors have already had a chance to provide evidence that could have proven they did generate these data and apparently declined to do so. The institution will have access to physical materials and files like lab notebooks and computers and so should be able to determine if the authors’ story about their own data origins is valid. If the authors are able to provide evidence of the originality of their work with dates that precede the submission to Journal X then this would enable the current journal to reject the accusation of the complainant. In this case it is also worth considering reporting the situation to the institution of the complainant because the evidence provided so far appears weak and this may be a false claim. This should be done now, so each institution may sequester evidence.
The second point is related because for there to have been theft from lab notebooks or an unpublished article draft there must have been some contact between the two parties. Could the authors have missed an acknowledgement of a personal discussion with the complainant, or of a presentation/documentation of that work? The journal could ask the complainant for evidence of submission of their work to Journal X, or whether they submitted anything to a public repository or preprint server; was the method presented at a conference with proof from a conference proceedings or poster? If the ‘stolen’ ideas exist only in the complainant’s notebook, how could the other author group have come by it; did the complainant ever share their rough notes with anyone? The other relatively easy check would be to see if there are any other obvious links between Journal X and the complainant; for example, is one of Journal X's editors a supervisor of the complainant? Answers to these questions would help to confirm that the article in Journal X existed and whether the authors of the article in the present journal had any insight into or knowledge of it.
There are some potential concerns here about breach of confidentiality in the processes at Journal X, but this would be for them to investigate further. (e.g., following COPE's flowchart on alleged reviewer misconduct). In any case, there is little that the present journal can do about this.
Finally, it would be advisable for the journal to check whether any novel material was introduced into the article when it was revised for publication. It is likely that this would simply confirm that this consisted of revisions as requested by the reviewers, but evidence of new work not previously seen by the editor could be a red flag that the situation is more complicated. On the evidence given here, however, there is not enough proof of plagiarism to support an expression of concern in the presenting journal.