- Case
Duplicate submission
…portions of the texts of the two manuscripts are identical. No reference is made in either paper to the other submission. The instructions for authors for both journals state that ‘by submitting, corresponding authors confirm that their manuscripts report unpublished work that is not under consideration for publication elsewhere’. The authors may have been unaware that journal A and journal B are now… - Case
Dual publication
…The tables and text were original and not copied from any previous article, he said. He added that the authors would be pleased to acknowledge in an erratum that this was an unintentional oversight. - Does this constitute dual publication? - Should the authors’ apology be accepted or should the matter be taken further?… - Case
Duplicate submission
The editor wrote to the authors but received a very unsatisfactory reply. The editor reported back to the editorial board. The editor has decided not to accept any submissions from these authors for the next two years.… - Case
Duplicate submission of a paper
A paper concerning the prevention of coronary disease in primary care was received. This examined the practical consequences of following some recent national recommendations and suggested that the recommendations were unrealistic. A few weeks later another paper from the same authors was submitted, which the editor who first read it thought was probably an inadvertent duplicate submission of… - Case
Duplicate submission
…editors of journal A about the possibility of duplicate submission. · Was the author guilty of duplicate submission? Could he reasonably suppose that having formally withdrawn his article from journal B, it was not “under consideration” again there until/unless he formally resubmitted it? Does the exchange of emails… - Case
Multiple submissions of a paper
- The authors should have pointed out that the paper was a resubmission. They might have thought that the volume of papers received by the journal would have made it difficult to detect multiple submissions. - The critical point is the difference between each version of the paper as it could be argued that if the authors had improved it, then resubmission would be permissible. - Sometimes… - Case
Possible dual publication
As editor of journal A I am handling a manuscript by an author and it is likely to be accepted, although this is not yet decided. As a reviewer for journal B, I have since been asked to review a manuscript by the same author that uses similar material and comes to a similar conclusion, but pushes the presentation of the results a little further. My gut feeling is that there is insufficient nove… - CaseCase Closed
Multiple redundant submissions from the same author
…journals. We followed the same steps and have not received a response. The institution listed in the author's submission form is not an academic one. We cannot find the author on the staff list and the only email address the author has provided is a Gmail account. Question(s) for the COPE Forum • What additional steps can/should we should take if the author/institution is… - CaseCase Closed
Author disagreement blocks submission
A paper was submitted to a medical journal reporting original research on human subjects. Two corresponding authors, author A (first in authors’ list) and author B (last in the list) were listed. The paper was sent to external referees but while it was under review, the editor received an email from author A stating that s/he had not read the paper, was not aware of the submission and did not… - Case
Dual publication and attempted retraction by the author
…own submission. She then explained that some personal and professional issues had distracted her for some time, after which her PhD tutor told her that his manuscript had indeed been accepted and published elsewhere. The lengthy review process had caused serious delays since it was first submitted, he said. The second paper was published two months after the first. The letter writer and Professor… - Case
Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality
The Forum discussed this complicated case and agreed that there was some culpability on the part of the editors, given that authors A1 and A2’s work was plagiarised, there was redundant publication and possibly dual submission. The advice was to contact authors A1 and A2 and solicit their opinion. This will give the editor a stronger case against author A3. For multiple papers, the editor… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship order in dual publications
A group of experts from two different learned societies produced a consensus of guidelines on the management of a condition. Both societies wished to publish the manuscript in the respective journals of their societies. However, they requested the authorship order be different on the two respective submissions. Questions for COPE Council Is it feasible to… - Case
Dual publication
It was brought to the attention of Journal A that a paper published in 2002 was similar (title, summary, introduction, case, survey, results, discussion) to a paper published in Journal B. Journal A is a very technical journal that reports conference proceedings and is not peer reviewed. Furthermore, Journal B had received a letter from the authors of another paper, published in a very prestigi… - CaseCase Closed
Author with recidivist behaviour involving simultaneous submissions
…Journal 1 has received more papers from the same author (some of them as a coauthor): two papers have already been accepted (one of them published online, the other in production), and nine more manuscripts are waiting for peer review. The Editor of Journal 1 wrote to the author informing them that manuscript A was going to be withdrawn for simultaneous submission, and that they needed to receive… - Case
Duplicate submission, self-plagiarism
…publication. When challenged the authors replied in great detail arguing about the exact extent of duplication but also saying this was an ‘honest mistake’ of not disclosing the other paper to us as it was not yet accepted. They still argue for the value of their paper. We have rejected the paper pointing out that duplicate submission is unacceptable. Should we do more?… - Case
Submission without knowledge of the corresponding author
A case report was received and the corresponding author was duly notified. The corresponding (and senior author) immediately faxed back, asking who had submitted the case report as he had not been consulted and had not seen the manuscript.The submission letter contained the names of all four authors; three of the signatures had been made using the same pen and probably the same hand.The… - CaseCase Closed
A pre-submission inquiry with a bribe
We recently received a pre-submission inquiry from an author, who identified as being fairly inexperienced with writing papers. At first glance it was a fairly standard pre-submission inquiry. The author mentioned the titles of two papers they allegedly had wrote and wondered whether we might be potentially interested in them. The author added that they had a colleague who would also be… - Case
Dual publication may be necessary in some situations
At a recent editorial board meeting it was suggested that in some disciplines straddling several specialties, transparent simultaneous publication might be necessary. It was suggested that this applies to sexually transmitted infections, and different readers may not have access to each other’s journals. For example, in a study of human papilloma virus epidemiologists, virologists, STD physicia… - CaseCase Closed
Two cases of double submission
Journal A is dealing with two separate cases of double submission: Case 1: Manuscript X was submitted to the journal. Two rounds of revision were suggested by the editor in charge, following comments by the referee, and an amended version was submitted. Following routine plagiarism detection checking, the editorial team found that a substantial part of the manuscript was similar to… - CaseCase Closed
Submissions from institutions where misconduct has previously been suspected
…details (including age, height and weight) in the revised paper were identical to the previous submission, making this explanation unlikely. In view of the unsatisfactory response from the lead author, a letter was sent to the dean of the faculty of medicine at the author’s institution but no reply has so far been received. Information regarding the academic department in this university has been…