- CaseCase Closed
An ambiguous plagiarism case
A paper was published in journal A. The plagiarism check tool did not show any similarity during the peer review process. Some time after publication of the paper, the editor-in-chief was contacted by an author who had published a paper in journal B. They claimed that the paper published in journal A was plagiarised from their MSc research project thesis and asked journal A to ret… - CaseOn-going
Guest editors for single articles
A COPE member has noted instances of journals contacting individuals - who are not on their editorial board - to request that they act as guest editor for a single manuscript. The invitation makes it clear that they are being asked to recruit reviewers and to make the editorial decision. This practice includes instances where the invitee has had no prior contact with the journal. C… - CaseCase Closed
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
Regarding a submitted (but not yet accepted) paper from a scientific collaboration, one of the authors has asked whether an instance of academic misconduct or - for that matter - any non-scientific but rather unsavoury personal facts or accusations (e.g. a penal or civil proceedings) can be considered as a valid ground for requesting that the journal remove an author from the paper, as per the… - CaseOn-going
Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript
Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were high… - CaseCase Closed
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On… - CaseOn-going
Author accused of sexual harassment
A reviewer for Journal X declined to review a paper as author Y has been the subject of a sexual harassment investigation. Author Y left the institute before the result of the investigation, thereby avoiding the outcome of the case. There is an academic loophole which allows those accused of misconduct to avoid any potential consequences by resigning before the outcome of the investigation, mea… - CaseOn-going
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the submission… - CaseCase Closed
Where should journals escalate serious concerns about an institution or institutional review board?
A publisher received a submission to one of their journals that raised ethical concerns. The concerns were related to potential harm or undue risk for participants who may be vulnerable. The publisher reviewed the ethics approval statement, and the authors had met the journal’s policy requirements by prospectively obtaining ethics approval from their institution before beginning the rese… - CaseCase Closed
Possible peer review manipulation
A journal received a complaint by one of the co-authors of an article submitted by a research team, stating that one of the reviewers suggested by the corresponding author sent an email to corresponding author asking them to tell them what comments they should insert in their review. In response, the corresponding author asked the co-authors to propose comments to be sent to the reviewer. One o… - CaseCase Closed
Is there a time limit for submitting a critique of a published article?
A letter to the editor was submitted to a journal with a comment referring to a study published a year previously. The reader raised concerns about the study and interpretation of the results. The editors of the journal examined the peer review comments of the manuscript and found that the aspects in question were missed out. The journal sought expert advice from an independent reviewer who com… - CaseCase Closed
Suspicious responses to authorship change requests
A journal received a request for multiple changes to the authorship list after the manuscript was accepted. Originally, there were five co-authors. After acceptance, the journal received the following requests from author A, the corresponding author and co-first author: remove one of the co-authors (author D), add a new co-author (author E), reorder the list of authors, and change the designate… - CaseOn-going
Change of corresponding author after manuscript published online
On submission of a manuscript to a journal, one of the authors was indicated as the corresponding author. During the submission, review, and revision process, and also through copyediting and proofreading, the corresponding author responded to all emails, signed the publishing agreements, and was generally available. At this time, the authors of the manuscript did not mention a possible change… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute involving a commercial institution
A paper was published in a journal. After publication, an associate editor of the journal said that they and other colleagues should have been authors on the paper. They cited a patent they helped write that overlapped with the article as proof that they should be authors on the paper. The authors of the paper refuse to add the associate editor and colleagues as authors. Unfortuna… - CaseOn-going
Request to remove an author post-publication
A paper was submitted to a journal by authors A and B. The paper was accepted and then published in the journal. Several months after final publication, author A contacted the journal asking for their name and their biography to be removed from the article. Author A stated that they wished to distance themselves from the research. Author B also contacted the journal separately to… - CaseOn-going
Deceased author and author delaying publication
The journal accepted a manuscript for publication with two authors. One of the authors died before signing the copyright. This manuscript is now ready for galley proof approval from the surviving author. Proofs were sent to the surviving author and the author who died as normal because the production editor assigned to this manuscript did not know that one of the authors had died. After… - CaseOn-going
Institutions paying authors to be named on papers
Some academic institutions are paying authors for the name of the institution to be included in the manuscript so that the institution has an increased number of publications in a given year. The institution gives the author payment and the author terms it as ‘funding’ or ‘grant’, which is not the case. The author publishes the research article in a journal with two affiliations and explains in… - CaseOn-going
Duplicate submission and request for withdrawal
A paper was submitted to journal A and received a ‘revision’ decision. At some point following this decision, the authors emailed the journal to request withdrawal, citing inconsistencies in their data and subsequent conclusions. A search of the literature showed that the same paper (with the same authors) was published in journal B the day before the withdrawal request. Clearly, the authors wa… - CaseOn-going
Unresponsive authors delaying publication
The journal received a submission which proceeded through peer review and was recommended for publication. The authors responded to the revision letter, providing a detailed itemised list of changes and revised their manuscript accordingly. The revised manuscript was subsequently accepted for publication. The normal process for articles in this journal is that when papers are accepted a… - CaseOn-going
Author alleges discrimination by institutional report
In 2020, the corresponding author of an article published online three years previously notified the journal of an authorship conflict and explained that the institution was requesting retraction. Because authorship conflict does not typically warrant retraction, the publisher requested further details from the author and the author's institution about the conflict. The author provided two diff… - CaseOn-going
Preprint plagiarism
Author group A deposited a preprint onto a preprint server and simultaneously submitted the manuscript to journal A. Peer review in journal A took some considerable time, but the paper (paper A) was eventually published. During the long peer review of paper A, author group A noticed that another set of authors, author group B, had published paper B in journal B. While paper B was submitted seve…