2001

A paper was submitted and reviewed by one referee, who recommended that the paper be revised and then refereed again. The authors submitted the revised version which went back to the initial reviewer. In his second report the reviewer raised concerns that the revised version was fundamentally different from the first paper. The number of patients and the inclusion criteria had changed.

The whole discussion section of a submitted case report was almost identical to the discussion section of a previously reported, similar case written up by another group of authors in another journal. The only difference lay in the patient details. While the other paper had been referenced in the case report, the authors of this case report had not indicated that the whole discussion was identical to the previously published paper.

Fourteen days after publication in a journal an email was received from a reader indicating that two closely related papers had already been published recently, one in the same month as the current paper, and one five months previously. Close examination of the papers by the editor indicated that there was considerable overlap between these three papers. The editor sent the three papers to an independent reviewer, specifically asking for an assessment of “triplication”.

A paper was received which described a double blind cross over study investigating the effect of a drug in pruritus as a result of chronic cholestasis. Both reviewers recommended rejection on the grounds that the information contained in the paper was not new. Both cited a study published four years earlier in a high impact factor journal which essentially dealt with the same question.

An author published a paper in Journal A that looked extremely similar to one already published as guidelines in Journal B. Of 48 paragraphs of text, 41 were almost identical. It has since transpired that several authors who were involved in the writing of the article published in Journal B have not been acknowledged. Prior publication elsewhere had not been acknowledged in the Journal A paper. The editor wrote to the authors requesting an explanation.

An editor sent out a paper to three reviewers. One of them, who gave the paper a favourable review, enclosed a research letter on the same topic, with, in his view, a better study design. He told the editor that the author of the paper had encouraged him to submit it during a meeting they both attended. He added that he thought its inclusion would make a good complementary pair of papers. The editor sent the research letter to the two other reviewers who had reviewed the first paper.

A piece of qualitative research was submitted that looked at the experiences of families facing a particular illness. The first author was both the main carer for the families and the researcher. She conducted and analysed all the interviews. Nobody else seemed to have analysed the verbatim transcripts, although two senior authors did help with analysis of the data.

A study submitted to a journal was sent out for external review. The reviewer pointed out that it was essentially a shorter version of a paper already published elsewhere. The authors had referenced this paper, but did not make clear that the submitted paper was simply a summary of the other published paper. Nor did they mention the other paper in the covering letter, or include a copy of it.

A journal received an account by email from outside Britain of how 14 patients infected with a potentially lethal virus had been treated with an unusual non-pharmacological treatment. The treatment seemed bizarre, and furthermore, there was no mention of approval by an ethics committee or of informed consent. The author was twice emailed to ask if he had ethics committee approval and if he had obtained informed consent. There was no response.

A paper was submitted, describing surgery on the sexual organs of four women. The paper was poorly written and hard to follow, but it seems that this surgery was undertaken primarily because of the unsatisfactory sexual experiences of the women’s partners. There was no mention of ethics committee approval or of the women having given consent, not only for the surgery but also for taking part in an experiment. The paper came from overseas.