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2006

Case

Ethics approval for audit 3

06-17

In this case, an international organisation wished to study the use of various regimens for medical termination of pregnancy in a developing world setting where termination of pregnancy is not supported by the state. They have performed an audit and have obtained data which will be of considerable value in other similar settings around the world.

Case

Ethics approval for audit 1

06-15

A group in a developing country decided to do a survey of maternal mortality in relation to the available local facilities in the various regions of their country. They set up a small committee to look at the incidence and causes. They obtained the permission of the local authorities, including the local elders, community leaders, and local health care providers, to scrutinise records and assess aetiology and quality of care. In the paper, aggregated results are described.

Case

Request for a retraction of a retraction

06-14

In October 2000, a journal published a retraction of a February 2000 publication of a research paper. In the same issue the dean of the corresponding author’s medical school reported the findings of an investigational committee that found, contrary to what was stated in the paper:

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There was no ethics committee approval for the study.

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Case

Institutionalised policy of gift authorship?

06-13

A manuscript was submitted to our journal. After review we asked for revision. At this time we sent a formatting checklist which includes criteria for authorship. Two authors were removed in the resubmission. Eventually the manuscript was published.

Case

Authorship dispute

06-12

The paper in question describes a collaborative study of several datasets (not all previously published). A putative referee was asked to review the paper and declined. However, this led to a written complaint asserting that (s)he should be an author as (s)he had made a significant contribution to some of the work described in the paper.

Case

Misuse of post-publication literature evaluation service

06-11

An online post-publication literature evaluation service that publishes only positive reviews, aiming to highlight the best papers in medicine, received an evaluation of a paper that had been published in a journal for which the evaluator of the paper acts as editor in chief. The evaluator did not declare any competing interests but the editor dealing with the evaluation knew about his/her role in the journal.

Case

A case of plagiarism

06-10

A paper with five authors was submitted from a university hospital in a Middle-Eastern country. One of the reviewers complained that it extensively plagiarised one of his own publications. Examination showed that about 30% of the text and tables had been copied. The results were original, and in some cases had simply been slotted into the plagiarised text.

Case

Dual submission

06-09

Paper 1 was submitted to journal A. The paper dealt with monitoring of a chemical element in various occupations in a range of workplaces. Samples were taken from the workplace air and bodily fluids of the workers, and conclusions were drawn about what metabolite should be measured in order to estimate a worker’s dose of the element. The chosen reviewers were experts in relevant biological monitoring.

Case

Ethical approval and parental consent

06-08

A journal received a paper from a single author, attributed to a UK institution, in which 10 children were operated on using two techniques, each child having one technique to one side and one to the other side, at the same operation.

The paper went to review, and neither reviewer spotted that this was a prospective surgical study on children, with no mention of consent or ethical approval.

Case

Author’s name removed from submitted article

06-07

A week after receiving a paper on a study for consideration for publication, the Editor received an email from person X claiming to have been the principal investigator of the study for the previous five years, up until he recently parted company in acrimonious circumstances from the hospital Trust in receipt of the NHS R&D funding for the study.

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