2006

One of the figures in an article under review was said by the authors to appear in a presentation given at a conference while the paper was still under review and from this identified the reviewer and accused this person of abusing their position. We could not confirm to the authors that they had correctly identified the reviewer. The authors contacted the reviewer directly and also contacted the Brain office.

Our journal has received a submission regarding clinical trial results. The authors wish to include the “raw data” as an appendix to the manuscript. The study was completed several years ago and was controversial at the time. The authors wish to publish the raw data to allow the public to view the findings and make their own decisions about the trial. We do not know the best way to handle this situation.

In 2003, Journal A published an original article. In 2006, the editor received a complaint of plagiarism relating to a case report published by Journal B in 2000.

The introduction of both articles had one identical paragraph and some paragraphs in the discussion were similar.

An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best papers in medicine, received an evaluation of a cost effectiveness study assessing a new therapy. The evaluator quoted estimated amounts of cost saved when using the new therapy compared with other therapies, naming the manufacturer of the new therapy.

This case came to light when the editors of two journals (J1 and J2) established that the same manuscript (MsA) had been submitted to both journals simultaneously. On bringing this information to the attention of the author, stating the seriousness with which this action was viewed and requesting an explanation, the author apologised and withdrew the manuscript from both journals without offering an explanation.

The editor received correspondence from a third party suggesting that a paper published in 2005 in the journal by four co-authors contained suspect data. The suspicion was based on the observation that in three separate figures all error bars were identical.

Author X contacted the editor of Journal A to enquire whether the journal would be interested in a review of a new concept in the treatment of a disease, written by author X and two co-authors. Author X said that his co-authors had suggested writing the paper for another journal but he had convinced them to submit the paper to Journal A. The editor invited submission and, after peer review, the paper was published.

Paper A appeared in a foreign language journal, together with an English abstract. Paper B was submitted to us, and one of our referees alerted us to the similar content.

I became involved in this issue after reports from doctors in a developing country that three papers in a systematic review published by my company may have been fabricated.

The papers in question had co-authors in two other countries and so I contacted them.

One co-author replied that he had concerns, but as none of the studies was conducted in his country, he had no data. He said he was unaware of the papers until Dr X told him they had been accepted in the journals.

A group in a developed country performed an audit of pregnancy and its outcome in a group of 250 women with congenital heart disease. There were four maternal deaths of women in the series. It was decided to write up the audit.