The paper was sent to two reviewers and published after modification. Between acceptance and publication, some modelling that had been included in the original paper was removed. Some time after publication one of the people who had reviewed the study submitted a letter for publication that included this model. The original authors were rather surprised by this and they sent us a letter pointing out that their original paper had included this material. The question arises as to whether the reviewers had done anything improper. The authors of the paper knew who had reviewed their paper, and were rather surprised that one of them should have submitted this model. Nevertheless, the reviewer did not recommend removing the material, and he would not have known that the material had been removed until the paper was published. The authors have therefore taken the view that no further action should be taken, and we have complied with their wishes. Have we done the right thing?
_ The authors wanted to know if the model had been removed on the recommendation of the referee who had then gone on to use the model himself. _ It was thought that the reviewer had breached his duty to the editor, and should be asked (in a neutral sense) to clarify this. _ This case highlights the imbalance between reviewers and authors. If a senior author had refereed a junior author’s paper, s/he might be less likely to disagree or raise an objection in situations such as this.
Agreement was achieved between the authors and reviewers and explanatory correspondence was published in the journal.