- CaseCase Closed
Professional misconduct of one author
…There may be some risk involved in extending ourselves beyond the clear-cut guidelines of academia, but could there also be a wider duty of ethical care to authors? Is this a reason to remove the co-author? All authors agree on submission that they have made a clear contribution to the published article and, alongside ICMJE criteria for authorship, select defined CRediT roles on the article… - CaseCase Closed
Ethical issues of responding to government agency request for information
…confidentiality of the submission or review process. Hence in summary, there should be some information publicly available based on any retraction notices, but sharing additional information about the peer review process should be discussed with legal counsel. Additional information about the confidential review process should likely be withheld unless deemed legally necessary to comply with the… - CaseCase Closed
Request for addition of new authors
A journal received an article submission from two authors. The paper went through several revisions over the course of a year, and was eventually accepted for publication. The authors were informed about acceptance and the paper was sent for copyediting. The editorial office subsequently sent the final version of the paper to the authors for proofreading. On the same day, a request was… - CaseCase Closed
Data availability for vulnerable populations
The Forum was informed that this journal has a range of additional measures in place to protect vulnerable populations who are the subject of their submissions. These include requesting extra ethics documentation and study justifications from authors, seeking advice from specialist chief editors, and only proceeding if the topic of the research is not deemed to be sensitive. The Forum… - CaseCase Closed
Removing a retracted article from a third party site
…the manuscript submission system a statement that authors agree to take liability if they have misrepresented consent or if consent was not adequate. … - CaseCase Closed
Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
Journal A accepted a manuscript with six authors in June 2017, which was published in January 2018. Several months later, the editors of journal A found that journal B had published paper B, which shared striking similarities to paper A. Journal B accepted paper B in November 2017 and published it in February 2018. The first author of paper B was different but the remaining four authors were fr… - CaseCase Closed
Author impersonating corresponding author without knowledge of coauthors
We received an article which was accepted and published after an uneventful peer review process. The article was apparently written by seven authors from two universities. As part of our routine processes, all co-authors were alerted to a submission via the email addresses provided by the submitting author. Some time after the article had been published, we received an email from the… - CaseCase Closed
Revoked parental consent
Our journal publishes case reports describing the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of unusual cases. Parents must provide written informed consent prior to manuscript submission. No cases are presented with unique identifiers and each is anonymised as much as possible. A manuscript was submitted with written consent that was accepted for publication and assigned to an issue. Just… - CaseOn-going
A case of salami slicing
A reviewer of our journal noticed similarity between a published paper (P1) and a manuscript under review (P2). At the same time, a member of the editorial team noticed similarity between another accepted manuscript for publication (P3) and both paper P1 and manuscript P2. All three papers were submitted by the same authors based on the same trial, reporting three different endpoints measuring… - CaseOn-going
Editor as author of a paper
The Forum agreed this was a failure of journal processes and the editor in chief must take responsibility for this. The change was not detected but there should be processes in place when any change in the authorship of a paper is noted. Authors should be required to clearly state when any changes in authorship are made after the initial submission, and the journal needs to ensure it tightens… - CaseCase Closed
Inadequate assurance of human research ethics for a questionnaire
…possibilities of harm were the 160 individuals surveyed warned about them? How? Were they told what the data would be used for? What were they told? When you have amended the paper to give some indication and can supply a (translated) consent form, please visit the instructions to authors to complete your submission". In response to these queries the following reply was received. "We have set a cover… - CaseOn-going
Concerns about the reliability of findings following re-analysis of a dataset from a published article
In the light of the advice provided by the COPE Forum, the editor followed-up with the reader and he has agreed to submit his re-analysis for publication. The editor is awaiting the submission of the piece describing the re-analysis.… - Case
Retract, correct, or both?
…this as a new submission if/when it is submitted. In the meantime, the journal has adopted the suggested policy of emailing all of the authors, and not just the corresponding author, when the journal is dealing with any manuscript.… - CaseCase Closed
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
…journal 2 the reviews we still have? • In principle, could we have shared the supplementary files and original submission (although they are no longer available)?… - Case
Self plagiarism
…submission”. The important issue is not disclosure, but that publication of such work would be redundant. The previously published material remains in the public domain and is generally subject to copyright. Discussion of the work is, of course, acceptable, but not replication of whole sentences or paragraphs. No further action is contemplated, but we strongly suggested that they reconsider their policy in… - Case
The ethics of using privileged information
A paper published in one of our journals (paper A) provoked the submission of a correspondence article claiming that a minor conclusion of the paper was a misinterpretation and erroneous. The point in contention was a question of zoomorphology and our paper’s conclusions were based on analysis using a non-invasive technique while the rebuttal relied on more traditional techniques. We are… - CaseCase Closed
Attempt to supress legitimate scientific results
…manger stated that the original manuscript had been approved for submission by institute B but the revised manuscript had not, and asked the editor to remove the paper from the journal’s website immediately. The editor said that this was not possible and further explained that if institute B wanted the paper retracted then they would need to provide a written justification. Within an hour, the… - CaseOn-going
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
…'published' in 2021; it is only available as a pdf; and no data and supporting evidence is available. Furthermore, Journal Y does not provide a publication date, submission date, peer-review process, acceptance date, etc. that can be used to track or verify the 2021 publication information for Article B. The authors of Article B appear to have additionally created at least 3 suspected fake… - CaseCase Closed
Post-publication correction because of lack of consent
…article. The journal should examine how this happened in terms of the journal’s own policies and procedures. The journal should consider reviewing their instructions to reviewers so that in the future ethical aspects are looked at with more diligence. In-house procedures could also be considered in order for research ethics to be properly assessed during the early phases of submission. The journal… - CaseCase Closed
Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance
…several retractions involving some or all of the same authors. If innocent, the authors could readily give a satisfactory explanation. Other factors to consider in deciding how to proceed include whether a false declaration has been made on submission (eg, some journals ask all authors to confirm they had full access to all the data) as well as possible salami slicing. …