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Ukrainian authors request retraction of article in Russian conference proceedings
A journal has been contacted by a group of authors from Ukraine who wish to retract their article because of acute ethical issues in relation to the war with Russia. The authors are employees of a research institute in Ukraine. When preparing their article they were not fully informed about the country of the organisers of the conference. They are concerned that participation in a Russian confe… - CaseCase Closed
Balancing anonymisation and open science during peer-review
As an editor of a journal with a double-anonymous peer review system, I often wonder about the right balance between open science practices and anonymisation of the manuscript for the review process. How much anonymisation is enough while being compatible with open science dissemination? In particular, when a manuscript includes information about the protocol registration and raw data, s… - CaseCase Closed
Should we allow pseudonymous authorship?
We are handling a manuscript that is now ready for acceptance. During the review process we noticed that one coauthor had the surname "999" and this coauthor and two others had the affiliation "Independent researcher". We asked the corresponding author what this meant. Their answer was that the names of two of these three authors, including "999", were pseudonyms. The paper was based on a compe… - CaseOn-going
Rescind a decision post-acceptance prior to publication
A paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal has recently been found to be unsuitable for publication. The authors have been highlighted in other journals for disseminating misinformation regarding the treatment of COVID-19. An expression of concern has been issued on another article, similar to the one we are close to publishing, in another publisher's journal. We looked into th… - CaseOn-going
Allegation of authorship misconduct
We recently received a complaint about an article which was published in our journal, which was originally sent to Journal X and copied to us. The complainant claimed that they had submitted an article to Journal X which was rejected. They alleged that their ideas and data had been leaked, stolen by another group of researchers, and published in our journal. We have asked the authors and… - CaseOn-going
Submission of article by ghost author
A corresponding author and two coauthors submitted a paper to our journal. The article was published after due process of reviewing etc. After publishing the paper, a student contacted us to say that the paper was totally derived from their Master's thesis. The journal's Research Ethics Committee heard the case and it was confirmed that the paper had been extracted from the thesis. All the auth… - CaseOn-going
Possible image manipulation
A whistleblower posted on PubPeer regarding some apparently overlapping images in an article published several years earlier. To the research integrity team there appeared similarities, enough to warrant a request for the original images / raw data from the authors. The authors said they no longer had access to the original data and have denied any editing was made to the images. We commissione… - CaseOn-going
Can a published journal article be submitted to conferences?
An article is submitted to a journal and accepted for future publication. The authors receive the acceptance letter and the script is waiting for the final publication process (within 4-6 months). During this time the authors ask the journal if they can present the full text of the article at a conference (which is going to be held before the publication by the journal). They also declar… - CaseCase Closed
Request for a retraction from a pharmaceutical company
A journal recently received an 11 page letter via email titled ‘request for a retraction’ from a pharmaceutical company (PC). They have issues with one of our critically appraised topic(s) which critically appraises two papers that were funded by PC and written by employees at PC. The two papers were published in separate journals. Our critically appraised topic (CAT) was peer reviewed… - CaseCase Closed
Multiple complainants for a single article
We received four letters of accusation on the same published article from 4 different email addresses (namely A, B, C, D) consecutively with the interval of each being 1 month. The first letter of accusation identified several issues with the use and interpretation of statistics, and noted that no reference number was provided for the study’s ethics approval. In response the editorial o… - CaseOn-going
Wrong article abstract published: corrigendum or retraction and republication?
An author published an article in journal A. At the proofreading stage they were asked by the publisher to reduce the number of words in the abstract. After publication, the author indicated that they had inadvertently included the wrong abstract in the proofreading correction step, supplying one which belonged to another article they had authored. The article is now published with the wrong ab… - CaseOn-going
Authorship dispute over image
A journal published an article on a drug. They also accepted a letter questioning the method used for determination of particle size in the study. The author of the original article claimed that the image used in the letter was theirs and asked that the letter not be published. It appears that the two authors used to collaborate. The journal was unable to verify who produced the image… - CaseOn-going
Previous publication cannot be verified
Publisher A received a concern suggesting that a coauthored paper published in one of their journals had previously been published by the complainant in an industry in-house journal (now disbanded). All three individuals had worked for the company which sponsored the in-house journal. The publisher asked for a contact at the company so that they could request information about their publication… - CaseOn-going
Image duplication
The editor received an allegation of image falsification from a whistleblower relating to two papers published more than ten years previously (under the previous editor and publisher). A senior editor reviewed the allegations according to COPE guidelines, and decided there was evidence of image duplication. The allegations were then put to the author who was unable to supply the original data a… - Case
Retraction or correction?
A publisher received communication alleging that a published article in one of their journals contained large portions of text taken without attribution from another article. Upon review of these allegations, it was determined that a table in the article had been reproduced. In the table the authors did not put direct quoted material within quote marks or otherwise identify the quoted material… - CaseCase Closed
Erratum query
We have been notified that an erratum is about to be published on a Research article in Journal A, which is one of the key references supporting a Review article subsequently published in Journal B. All parties are agreed that the erratum (which corrects an oversight in reporting methodology) in no way affects either the data presented in the paper or the conclusions reached. Questio… - CaseCase Closed
Duplicate publication
We were made aware of a double publication in our journal dating from 20 years ago. A paper which was originally published in French in another journal the year previously was translated and published in our journal. The editorial paperwork is long lost, however, the principal author is a member of our editorial board. They readily responded and explained that it was not uncommon at that time t… - CaseCase Closed
Withdrawal of an article
We received a manuscript for consideration for publication in one of our journals (Journal A). During the peer review process we became aware that the manuscript had already been published in another journal (Journal B). When we asked the authors about this they said that they had asked the other journal to withdraw their manuscript before publication but this had not been done. We rejected the… - CaseCase Closed
Potential peer reviewer misconduct
A journal received the recommendation of a peer reviewer which expressed doubts about the validity of some of the data in an article. The editor-in-chief got in touch directly with the author and mediated to have the data validated by an outside contributor. The authors responded by providing data validation by a colleague, who is now becoming a potential coauthor. The initial data were… - CaseCase Closed
Editor adding reference to an author's work
Several years ago Author A was asked by Editor B to contribute an essay to a publication. The book took a long time to complete and underwent many modifications. When the book was published Author A noticed that several edits had been made to the text without Author A being informed and which Author A did not approve. The most notable edit is an added reference to a piece of text. The added ref…