- CaseOn-going
Authors’ contributions and involvement by medical communications company
…consideration by the journal. On submission, the authors declared language editing assistance by this company, but not developmental editing. The cover letter included several inaccuracies about the work reported in the manuscript. After being queried about these errors, the authors acknowledged that they followed a template for the cover letter provided by the company and that it was their first time writing… - CaseClosed: author misconduct
Case of figure duplication and manipulation involving two journals
…journal, journal G, should be informed of the actions being taken(4) that author D be asked to resign as an editor of journal A to avoid bringing the journal into disrepute by association. The outcome of the internal review of the editorial process leading to the publication of the papers is incomplete at the time of submission. Findings will be fed back to the editorial boards at meetings… - Case
Sanitising a misleading statement
…because this no longer appeared in the revised manuscript. Author A’s response however, did reference the contradictory evidence, in the process of reiterating that the research group had failed to establish that the third party had not been involved in their original paper. Journal X then accepted both submissions. But the research group withdrew their reply, compelling the withdrawal of Author… - CaseOn-going
Undeclared author conflict of interest
…manuscript have been brought into multiple legal challenges to their use of data as represented in the published article. At the time of submission and publication, multiple authors of the manuscript served as unpaid members of the advisory board of the spinoff, and none declared their role in the manuscript paperwork. The journal became aware of this situation through a letter submitted by… - CaseOn-going
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…illustrating the procedure in both manuscripts are identical. The reference list is identical. I can think of only two ways to make sense of this submission: sloppiness or fraud. Under the sloppiness assumption, the authors would have submitted a text referring to their randomised control trial and tables, referring to an earlier observational study. This is conceivable mostly because it is hard to… - Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
…although this is not clear. The manuscript was rejected on a number of grounds, mainly relating to questions of methodology and partly related to the question of publishing a small subset of a much larger set of data (also to be published eventually according to the website of the national project). The submission did, however, raise other ethical questions that remain a matter of some debate… - Case
Author dispute over data presented in paper
A manuscript was submitted to our Journal in 2008. The six authors signed the author form for the Journal which accompanies all submitted manuscripts. The author form gives information on the role each author played in the study and states that each author has read and approved the paper for submission to the Journal. Following peer-review the paper was accepted for publication. It was… - Case
An authorship dispute and a question about when a paper is considered published
…they should agree authorship prior to submission but in this case Authors A and B claim that Author C is not an author so that they have nothing to agree.… - CaseOn-going
Ethical approval requirements for case study reports
…reporting is carried out. The key point from a publication ethics point of view is that journals should make their policies clear on when they expect ethics approval, as well as what declarations are needed at submission and in the paper. Examples of some comprehensive case report guidelines can be found at Dove… - CaseCase Closed
Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
The journal is working on implementing additional steps in the submission process to prevent similar issues in the future. The editor considers the case closed. Related resource Spanish version: El editor y los revisores solicitan que se cite su… - Case
Author did not see reviews or revisions to the manuscript and did not give approval for publication
The Forum were reassured that the paper had been dealt with blindly, and so there was no issue of misconduct on the part of the editor-in-chief. The Forum suggested that for online submissions, the editor should ensure that the email addresses of all authors are recorded. Some journals, including the BMJ, copy in all authors when contacting the corresponding… - Case
The judgement of Solomon: a case of two strikingly similar papers
…of his paper. His case was that paper A reported a study that had been presented at a conference in April 2007. He thought that one or more of the authors of paper B might have reviewed his paper for the conference the previous November, and had used it to design an identical study. He claimed that paper B showed evidence of having been “rushed into submission”. We contacted the… - CaseCase Closed
Permission to publish a case report
…hospital to use the images down to personal issues between Dr A and Dr Y. At this point, the editors felt they should retract the paper given that: 1) the corresponding author confirmed upon submission that written informed consent from the patients had been obtained for publication, but the journal had not received it after requesting it; and 2) although Dr A stated that 'the… - CaseCase Closed
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
…conflicts of interest. They responded that they did not include the conflicts of interest in their publication in journal A because at the time of submission the generic drug A was manufactured by company A. Given the medicine was the intellectual property of company B, the journal felt that the response of the authors regarding the issue with conflicts of interest was an inappropriately undisclosed… - CaseCase Closed
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
…reviewers (and the authors) about the level of involvement of each society. Requiring review by someone from each relevant society would trigger the need to contact all the societies involved to look for appropriate reviewers. That action could have prevented this problem. Second, the journal should require sign-off of the relevant authorities at each society prior to submission of the manuscript.… - CaseOn-going
Ethical conduct of qualitative research studies
…scholarly research. Further, it is within the journal’s rights to demand ethics review (approval or official waiver) in whatever cases they define, and it is the author’s responsibility to have checked their target journal’s policies well in advance of submission. COPE recommends that journals consider, firstly, whether they consider this type of 'market research' as within their scope, and if so,… - CaseOn-going
Authorship issue related to misleading action of one author
…funder. As editor, I replied that at the page proof stage, all edits/changes must be very minor. Substantial changes would require that the manuscript be taken out of the production process and depending on the nature of the changes, the entire submission and review process might have to begin anew. During a telephone call with the first author she stated that she believed the second author had… - CaseCase Closed
Service evaluation as research in a controversial area of medicine
…problematic. A suggestion was to write an editorial on the concepts more broadly and how the journal’s policy is going to evolve in the future regarding secondary research being conducted as service evaluations/audits/quality improvement reporting and what the ethics requirements will be in the future. What are the expectations of the journal for future submissions of service evaluations? The Forum… - CaseCase Closed
Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication
…the retraction. The new paper would have to be considered as a new submission and should be reviewed by a new set of reviewers. It was noted that a recent issue of The Lancet (31 January 2015) contained a re-published article that had originally been retracted. There was also a linked commentary explaining what had happened. It was suggested that the editor may wish to use this as a model if he… - CaseCase Closed
Compromised peer review (unpublished)
…editorial. We have made a number of technical changes to our systems. On submission, where authors suggest potential peer reviewers we issue this warning: “Intentionally falsifying information, for example, suggesting reviewers with a false name or email address, will result in the manuscript being rejected.” When a manuscript is shared with an external editor to invite potential reviewers, we…