Life sciences

A journal recently received an 11 page letter via email titled ‘request for a retraction’ from a pharmaceutical company (PC). They have issues with one of our critically appraised topic(s) which critically appraises two papers that were funded by PC and written by employees at PC. The two papers were published in separate journals. 

We have noticed a lot of variety in the way that ethical approval for Case Reports are published in different journals. For example, some state that the study was determined not to require Ethics Committee (EC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) review especially if it was a retrospective review. Others state that all procedures were carried out in accordance with approved ethical standards, giving the name and reference number of the relevant IRB.

A COPE member has noted instances of journals contacting individuals - who are not on their editorial board - to request that they act as guest editor for a single manuscript. The invitation makes it clear that they are being asked to recruit reviewers and to make the editorial decision. This practice includes instances where the invitee has had no prior contact with the journal.

Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were highlighted in Author X’s submission to Journal Y. Author X’s article is now on hold.