2011

We were contacted by a reader who told us that he had spotted a number of cases of image duplication and mislabelling of fluorescent tags that had occurred over the past 4 years. These involved two papers published in our journal, and two other papers published in two different journals. The two papers in our journal were both reviews, and the one that had the most occurrences involved a poster (associated with the review) that we had recently published.

The corresponding author as well as the co-authors admit that they have omitted one author (author X) who was responsible for a major part of the work in their study.

Author X insists on having full acknowledgment in the authorship line and would not be satisfied with an erratum.

What should I do? Please advise also about whether author X will appear in different citation trackers as one of the co-authors.

In a recent and very prominent case of publication misconduct resulting in the retraction of 12 research papers (to date), many journals have been included in ‘round-mails’ from the whistleblower and other scientists. Our journal (a reviews and features journal) has published a review from the main author associated with the misconduct, which contains reference to six of the retracted papers.

This case was posted on the WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) list-serv and the editor (from India) asked whether COPE could provide guidance.

This query refers to a clinical trial comparing two forms of treatment which has since been published in another journal.

Our journal is attempting to encourage the adoption of a uniform standard for the reporting of population genetics data. As part of this, one of the editors of our journal has submitted a proposal requiring authors to submit their data, including raw data, to his own database.  While the intention is laudable, there would appear to be a clear conflict of interest.

Several Europe-based authors, including well known, respected and much published ones, submitted an essay for the journal's section on research methodology.

We rejected it without external review as it wasn't making sufficiently new points. We offered to see it again, however, if it was revised and if it added some worked examples using this methodology within published studies. A year later the article was resubmitted after revision, and we sent it for review.

A few months we were contacted by a dean of an  institution  who informed us about misconduct of one of the senior scientists in that institution. An investigation launched by the institution showed that author A and coauthors reused the same images to show controls in many figures in their different publications. This problem was found in three publications in our journal.

The editor in chief received a letter to the editor criticising a paper published earlier in the journal. The editor first told the author of the letter that he would publish the commentary after he had given the authors of the criticised paper a chance to respond. When asked by the author of the letter, he later added that he would also publish the letter if the authors failed to respond.