An anonymised manuscript was sent to a senior faculty member (researcher A) of a well-known institute for peer review. The faculty member was known to have pedigree in publication on the topic of the manuscript for many years. The manuscript was rejected with comments. Based on editorial opinion and other comments, the manuscript was rejected by the editor-in-chief. Six weeks after rejection, it transpired that researcher A shared tables of a manuscript sent to them in confidence for peer review through an email with their junior student as 'an example'. The subject of the email was 'Tables as example'.
Researcher A claimed that this was confidential sharing for education of their student but this was not mentioned in the email. It was also claimed by researcher A that they had asked the student to use these as templates. The student removed the data from the tables but used the template (structure and heading) to populate their own data. The structure of the tables was not unique but generic in nature. The faculty member remained the senior author of the student’s paper submitted for publication to another journal. The paper was rejected after an initial acceptance.
Researcher A informed the editor of their actions (sharing the tables) many months after the event, claiming that the matter was under investigation by their institute.
Questions for COPE Council
- Are there any ethical issues here?
- Is reproducing the format of generic tables (structure and heading) plagiarism?
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.
In general, sharing of embargoed information is never good ethical practice. Reviewing is generally confidential, unless a reviewer might need to consult a colleague, and the journal should have a procedure that explains how and in what circumstances this is allowed. If the journal does not have clear policies on this on their website and communicated to reviewers then this will be something they might wish to consider strengthening.
If the tables were generic, of the sort that might be found in sample tables available in word processing software or similar, then the reviewer's transgression may be minor. Conversely, if the text labelling in the rows and columns was unique to the manuscript under review then this may be more serious. Re-using unique content could be plagiarism, depending on the nature of the text.
While the description of this case does not explain the basis for the institute's investigation of this matter, the editor should take steps to confirm that the reviewer's actions did not involve an intentional (or even negligent) suggestion for this student to reuse another's content or data. If there is cause for question here, the editor may wish to look at the COPE flowchart What to do if you suspect a reviewer has appropriated an author’s ideas or data. Since the reviewer's institution is already investigating, the relevant next step would be for the journal to 'Consider removing the reviewer from the review database during investigation and inform the reviewer of your action'.