2003

A review paper covering the prevention of a certain type of infection was submitted to Journal A. One of the reviewers identified that the paper was based word for word on a report that had published guidelines on the same area. The authors of both pieces are different. The only significant differences between the submission and the original paper were in the introduction and conclusion.

Eighteen patients with a variety of symptoms and 10 controls had various measurements taken after being given an oral glucose load. Participants also had routine blood sampling and were put on a defined diet for three days. The authors did not consider it necessary to obtain ethics committee approval, but all participating subjects signed a consent form recording their agreement to take part and to have the results published. The authors seem to be private practitioners.

An article on the community based diagnosis of a common disease was submitted. The journal had never received a paper from this particular country before. The diagnostic test used in the study is known to have a low sensitivity and is not the accepted gold standard. The editors felt that as the author was a senior academic, it was likely that his/her institution would be one of the few in the country to be able to afford the gold standard test.

An article published in Journal A in 2003 contains extensive, almost verbatim, unattributed quotations from an article published in Journal B in 2001. The editor asked a member of the editorial team to compare the two articles line by line, and there appears to be a high degree of overlap without any reference to the original article in Journal B. The authors of the article and the editor of Journal A were asked for an explanation.

A group of authors from the same specialty unit published a study in Journal A on all prehospital X procedures. They then sent another paper on X procedure in a subgroup of patients to Journal B. Paper B references paper A, but does not make it apparent that there is any overlap in these studies. On questioning by editor B, they stated that no patients in paper B were included in the previous study.

Following publication of a report, a country’s national health ministry set up a pilot study on two sites to examine the feasibility and acceptability of screening for infection X. The pilot study was co-ordinated by a national agency. It was agreed from the outset that the agency would lead on analysing data, co-ordinating any publications, and that the major publication output would involve both sites and the agency. The meeting at which this was agreed was not minuted.

A paper entitled: “X and Y versus X alone for condition A in children” was submitted to Journal A and published in 2001. Journal A has since been alerted to a paper published in Journal B in 1999, entitled: “Comparison of combination of X and Y with X alone in the treatment of condition A, ” written by two of the four authors in conjunction with another author not listed on paper A. Most of the abstract, methods, and discussion of the two papers are identical.

A journal had two incidences in which a questionnaire was used in studies without permission of the originators of the questionnaires. Both manuscripts originated in different countries, and used different questionnaires. 1. A manuscript was submitted which addressed quality of life issues. The referees had various concerns about the data and methods, and the authors were invited to revise the manuscript.

A manuscript submitted to Journal A was sent out for external review. It detailed a single case, reporting a new surgical technique. One of the external reviewers reported that the author had presented examples of several similar cases at a conference, which had not been referred to in the submitted paper. He requested further details of their results. The editor asked the authors for more information, as requested.

A case report was submitted to a journal, describing a patient with a very serious, curable infectious disease who had been given complementary medicine (plant extract) rather than the standard treatment. A search of the literature indicated that the authors were known to support complementary therapies. The alternative treatment was not evidence based. The case took place in a country were the standard treatment was easily available.