2002

Somebody—possibly a representative of a drug company or a PR acting for the company—rang an editor on behalf of study authors to say that she would guarantee to buy 1000 reprints if the journal would continue to consider for publication a study that conflicted with a policy that the journal had just introduced. “And”, she said, “I will buy you a dinner at any restaurant you choose.” The paper was rejected, but should further action be taken?

Editor A wrote to editor B, indicating that one of the reviewers of a paper submitted to Journal A contained material that had been submitted at about the same time to Journal B. Editor A requested a copy of the paper submitted to Journal B. Editor B responded, confirming that the paper in question had been submitted to Journal B (submission date two weeks earlier than the paper submitted to Journal A), but had been rejected eight weeks later after external peer review.

A paper was received, which detailed a research project conducted on newborn babies, which involved taking an invasive (and painful) sample from them. The paper was worthy of publication from the point of view of scientific value, but two issues worried the editors. First, it was unclear whether the sick babies’ samples were going to be used as part of their clinical management or whether these samples were taken simply for the trial.

A review by three authors, with Dr X as the lead author, was published in Journal A. Five months later, the editor of Journal A was informed by Professor W that a figure in the review by Dr X had originally appeared in a research paper, co-authored by Professor W in Journal B in 1990. The professor also said that Dr X had published the same or very similar figures in journals C, D (research papers), and E (review). The Journal C paper was reference 5 in the Journal A review.

Two companion papers from a single author, a paediatric surgeon working in a secondary/tertiary unit, were received. He had performed the same minor operation on 420 babies and 60 children over two years. His paper purported to report safety and efficacy. From the hanging committee’s own knowledge, and after checking with a surgical board member, a paediatric surgeon might be expected to do four or five such procedures in a year in an average practice, but there were over 200 in the report.

It was brought to the attention of Journal A that a paper published in 2002 was similar (title, summary, introduction, case, survey, results, discussion) to a paper published in Journal B. Journal A is a very technical journal that reports conference proceedings and is not peer reviewed. Furthermore, Journal B had received a letter from the authors of another paper, published in a very prestigious journal, which had been criticised in the version of the paper published in Journal B.

A paper was submitted to an online journal with the order of authors A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. After review, the manuscript was accepted for publication, subject to the authors making some minor changes. While making the formatting changes, the submitting author changed the order of the authors to B, A, C, D, E, F, G. This change was not noticed by the editors and the manuscript was published on the website as a preliminary PDF document while the final HTML form was being prepared.

A paper was submitted, detailing a small overseas trial of a drug treatment of a politically controversial disease. The treatment was moderately toxic. The paper was seen by two referees (A and B), who had considerable criticisms of the methodology used. Comments were also received from C, who was invited to review but refused, because s/he did not want his/her name known to the authors under the terms of the journal’s open peer review policy.

A contribution about training in family medicine training was published in a journal. Subsequently, a letter from the chairman of the department of family medicine at the university with which the author claimed to have been affiliated, said that the author did not work there. The author was asked for an explanation. He replied that he had done it involuntarily and that he would be happy for an erratum to be published in the journal, making this clear.

A paper was accepted, pending a revised version, which made use of official government information on reported health reactions in a particular age group over a 20 year period. Two of the authors were academics and two worked for the government’s health department. When the revision arrived, the names of the latter two authors were missing.