- Case
A case report of an experimental therapy, submitted by the patient
We received a pre-submission enquiry about whether we were interested in publishing a case report of a novel therapy that provided “a complete cure for heart disease.” The therapy involved a “membranotrophic drug” combined with diet and exercise. The therapy had been given to a patient who had experienced a myocardial infarction. Eighteen months later, the patient was apparently free o… - Case
Sufficient consent?
A paper was submitted which enrolled elderly nursing home patients to an experimental study of the effect of a medicinal plant on skin ulcers. Although the plant is licensed for use in other skin conditions, it does not have a specific licence for this indication. The study did not mention ethical approval or whether consent was obtained so the editor wrote to the author to query it. The author… - Case
Allegation of fraudulent publication
Journal A published a paper in 2002. In 2004 the Editor of Journal A was contacted by a reader, who expressed his doubts as to the integrity of one of the authors associated with the 2002 paper. The reader suggested that the author in question had been involved in the fraudulent publication of a paper published in Journal B in 2001. The reader had noted that the article published in Journal… - Case
Duplicate publication
In 2003 a paper was published in a specialist surgical journal following proper peer review. The paper summarised the experience of a group of clinicians concerned in treating malignancy in the Head and Neck using a novel method of therapy - and was a case series of 25 patients. The paper was not considered to be one of high priority but was published because of the paucity of information con… - Case
Legal advice
We have just had a paper submitted as an ethical debate in which the author details ethical concerns about a study previously published in another journal. The study involved complementary/alternative therapy for an infectious disease in children. The author alleges that the study gave insufficient protection to vulnerable subjects, who were exposed to unwarranted risks and discomfort; and that… - Case
No control group, arbitrary dosage, undiagnosed condition
In summary, we have a case series, with no control group, of patients with different conditions treated for an undiagnosed underlying condition with an arbitrarily prescribed dosage of a drug which is not registered for treating any of the conditions nor the undiagnosed underlying condition. I rejected the paper for publication and let the author know that the ethics committee of the journal wi… - Case
Suspected plagiarism
We had a case of suspected plagiarism recently on one of our journals, on which I would appreciate COPE’s advice. The case has been resolved, so this is not in the least urgent, but I would be interested to hear your views. Very briefly, at review stage the editor spotted substantial similarities between a paper submitted to our journal and a review published recently in a related title.… - Case
“Medical research” using data in the public domain
Information on competitors participating in a popular sporting activity was obtained from a website in the public domain. The authors used this data to see if the competitors' personal characteristics (height, weight etc.) affected their chances of winning. The editor asked the authors how they obtained consent from the competitors for this study. The authors responded saying that this data was… - Case
Plagiarism
A review article by an expert group plagiarised an article from another journal. It was largely a direct translation, involving large slabs of the text. Some of the authors are on the editorial board of the journal where the paper was published. There was no declaration that this was a translation of another article. … The editor is potentially in a very difficult situati… - Case
Salami publication
A paper submitted to Journal A was rejected after critical peer review. Although the data and methods were sound, the data in the paper were not new and had been described, at least in part, in previous publications. The authors could also have combined the outcomes in the current paper with previous papers, thereby avoiding salami publication. The methods section was opaque, making it very dif… - Case
Ethical approval procedural lapse
An observational study submitted to an institutional journal was sent for peer review. The authors were invited to submit a revision six months later. They did so, but had not responded fully to the reviewers' points, so they were asked for further clarification of their selection criteria, publication plan, and evidence of ethical approval. A paper by the same authors describing the same cohor… - Case
Foreign language duplicate publication
A paper was published in an Italian language journal, together with an English abstract. A second paper was submitted to a UK journal, one of whose referees spotted the similar content. Closer inspection indicates that both papers contain identical data and had an almost identical abstract and conclusions. The second paper does not reference, acknowledge, or cite the previous Italian pub… - Case
Sanitising a misleading statement
Author A published a paper in Journal X, which presented evidence of failure by another research group to declare a serious conflict of interest in a paper that had been published some years before in Journal Y. This conflict of interest centred around the undeclared involvement of a third party with a vested interest. Evidence for this was presented in the form of correspondence from the third… - Case
Attempted duplicate publication
A reviewer informed Journal A that a manuscript s/he had been asked to review was very similar to one s/he had reviewed for Journal B. The lead author was informed about this and told the editors would come back to him after discussing the matter further. These discussions found striking similarities between the two papers and that the two manuscripts had been handled within the same tim… - Case
Reviewer/author conflict of interest
Dr B accepted an invitation to review a manuscript for Journal A. Dr B was aware only of the title of the manuscript and had read the abstract before accepting the invitation. He was also aware that he was to return his review within two weeks. When the review failed to materialise within the allotted period, the editorial office of Journal A sent the reviewer four email reminders over t… - Case
Dual publication
An English language journal received a study describing a randomised controlled trial. The paper was accepted and published several months later. Five months after its publication the editors were informed that a similar study had been published in a German language journal two years earlier. Three of the four authors were involved. It had been carried out over the same time period, using the s… - Case
Misunderstood requirements for authorship
Dr X submitted a paper to a journal that was assigned by a rather hung-over editorial assistant to an associate editor who was a co-author on the paper. Realising the mistake, she emailed the associate editor to reassign the paper. He expressed surprise as he did not know Dr X, had not seen the paper before submission, and knew of no reason why he should be a co-author. Dr X was asked to… - Case
Consent and ethics approval questioned after acceptance
In a paper detailing a physiological study of healthy human volunteers the authors stated that ethics committee approval had been granted and that the participants had given informed consent. After peer review the paper was revised and accepted. During the production phase the journal received an email from a researcher who was reviewing another paper from the same authors for a differen… - Case
Ethical approval and fabrication of results
A group of authors, based in private practice, submitted three manuscripts to Journal A and one to Journal B. All the manuscripts described the application and effectiveness of a spinal manipulation technique. The first manuscript in Journal A was a case series of 21 patients. After publication, a member of the journal’s editorial board pointed out several flaws in the study design, incl… - Case
Using annual reviews to massage the impact factor
The editor in chief of Journal A is also on the editorial board of Journal B. Journal B publishes “annual reviews” that purport to describe recent advances in the field, but only do this by discussing and citing their own content. The editor in chief of Journal A now wants to have “annual reviews” in his journal to help increase the impact factor. In your experience, is…