A multicentre study conducted with a working group involving 38 centres was published in our journal. Author A was a member of one of the centres and was listed as the 13th author in the article. Another colleague (author B) who is not a coauthor and who works in the same department as author A, contacted our journal and claimed that the data from the centre used by author A in the study were used without the knowledge and permission of the other colleagues.
In the email to the journal, colleague B also attached a document signed by the director of the department mentioning that the use of the data was not requested by author A and was unauthorised. Author A was asked to comment on the claim by the director but did not comment. Colleague B asks the journal to publish a correction in an upcoming issue of the journal and to remove author A from the author list.
Questions for COPE Council
- Should the editor or the institution investigate the issue regarding the authorship conflict?
- Should the journal deal with the data ownership issues? If so, should they try to resolve the data ownership issues themselves or refer the case to the institution?
- Should the journal publish a correction or wait for the results of the institutional investigation before making a final decision about this case?
- Are there any other suggestions on how to proceed with this case?
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.
If author A is the only person from their institution named as an author on the paper, then removing them means that there will be no authors taking responsibility for that portion of the data; authorship comes with responsibilities. Unauthorized release of data is a significant ethics violation. Although not necessarily an authorship conflict, the corresponding author, and perhaps all the other authors of the paper, should be notified since this seems to be a problem for the working group as a whole. Certainly, no authorship changes could be made without their agreement. The request of author B does not seem to carry any weight unless the request expresses the wishes of the institution or the coauthors.
Data ownership is an increasingly difficult issue, especially in cases where research is conducted by several institutions, in multiple countries or sites, and authored by groups of researchers. This is an issue which needs to be investigated by the institution. The editors or the journal cannot conduct such an inquiry so it must be referred to the institution.
Input from the institution is needed before a correction can be made. The journal should reach out directly to the institution to ensure that colleague B is not simply settling some sort of score with author A. An Expression of Concern could be published highlighting the potential problem while the investigation proceeds; depending on the outcome of the investigation, a correction or retraction should follow.
The key point here is who has the rights to the data. That must be resolved to complete any investigation. The institution needs to sort out the data issue here. The journal should also consider having a data sharing policy if they do not already have one.