A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the submission system and which included all of the author details. In total, the email is estimated to have been received by around 440 individuals.
One of the recipients of the email contacted the society’s editorial office (EO) to report what had happened. The EO contacted the editor-in-chief and handling editor of the paper to see if they knew anything about the situation, but the reviewer had not contacted the editors to ask permission for a third party to assist with the review. The EO then removed the reviewer role from the reviewer on the submission system and cancelled the review assignment. The paper was assigned to a new reviewer.
Following this, the EO contacted the reviewer by email to explain why they had rescinded the reviewer role and review assignment and to clarify what the reviewer’s intentions were. The reviewer claimed to have acted in good faith, but the editors were not convinced by their explanation. Furthermore, the reviewer admitted to having sent out similar calls for volunteers when reviewing for the journal on three other occasions in the past. In all three cases the papers were rejected following a reject recommendation by the reviewer.
An editorial board meeting was urgently convened to discuss the case and a decision was taken to request the reviewer to individually contact every recipient of the ‘reviewer challenge’ email asking them to delete the email and attachment, and to reply with confirmation that they had done so. The reviewer has cooperated with this request. The EO has also been in contact with the author to explain the situation and reassure them that their paper has been assigned to a new reviewer.
Questions for the Forum
- Are there any further actions that the society or EO should take with respect to either the reviewer or the author?
- The society has banned the reviewer from submitting or reviewing any papers for the journal for a period of two years. Does the forum consider this to be an appropriate sanction?
- Is there a moral or ethical obligation for the EO to contact the authors of the three past papers which had also been reviewed by the reviewer following a similar kind of ‘review challenge’ email?
COPE’s advice on sanctions such as these is to be cautious because of the potential for legal challenges based on loss of earnings, reputational damage, discrimination, or suppressing access to the publishing market. It would be advisable for the team to seek advice on their sanctions policy with their legal experts especially if they are operating in a geographic region where conventions in this area are different.
It would be advisable to follow the case up with the authors affected by the past cases, both as a courtesy, and also because they have been exposed to the risk of their articles being stolen. Since the journal does not know to whom the review materials were sent there would be no way to trace where else the articles could have ended up.
The editorial team could also consider making the reviewer’s institution aware of the situation. It is possible that the reviewer has taken similar actions with regard to other journals and this would be beyond the scope of any single editorial team to trace. The institution or other affiliating body will be better placed to follow up and also to impose any educative requirements such as retraining on ethical standards in reviewing.
More broadly, the journal is advised to ensure that their expectations of reviewer behaviour are communicated very clearly to all potential reviewers. Examples were provided to the Forum of additional practices utilised by other journals. These included specific agreements sent to each new reviewer, and on-boarding materials which they are required to read or watch before they undertake their first review.