- CaseCase Closed
Disclosure and transparency issue
…authorship. The editor thinks that the described contribution goes much beyond copy editing. Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Is “assembling the comments and suggestions from all of the co-authors after the data re-analysis, and assisting in preparing the revised version of the paper for submission” simply copy editing or does it justify authorship?• The editor believes this is… - CaseCase Closed
Request for addition of new authors
…received from the corresponding author to add two new authors to the paper. The corresponding author mentioned that he sustained an arm injury during the period and the two other authors helped him with the revisions and uploading of the paper. The journal clearly states that requests for changes in authorship can only be considered before acceptance of the paper, and must be supported by various… - CaseCase Closed
Late addition of new author to article
…Institution for additional information) or disallow the addition. The editor could also suggest that an acknowledgement may be more appropriate than authorship. Some journals require each author’s contribution be identified on submission, and this could be a process the journal could put in place so that this issue does not occur in the future. But even if it not the norm for the journal to ask about… - Case
Anonymous information
We have received an allegation from an anonymous phone caller that an author has been wrongly omitted from a Viewpoint published 2 years ago. The claim was made that the author's contribution was suppressed by the institution. Should we act on such information? And if yes, what should we do? … The editor should contact the named person who had allegedly been left off. … We did… - CaseCase Closed
Author admits failure to credit other authors
…found that the author had left and was now a resident of another country. The university was unable to assist in resolving the authorship issue. The AOR then contacted the journal and stated that due to disagreement on the order of authorship, he was requesting a retraction of the article. One more attempt was made by the editor and a co-author to resolve the dispute, but the AOR refused to… - CaseCase Closed
Request for removal for one author but a coauthor cannot be reached
A journal accepted a paper but after receiving the decision letter, the corresponding author asked if one of the coauthors could be removed from the authorship list. This coauthor is now a prominent politician and felt that their new role would conflict with being an author on the paper. The journal informed the corresponding author that they would need written confirmation from… - CaseCase Closed
Withdrawal request by an author
…difficult for the journal to work out exactly what has happened, so the advice was to contact the institution for help. The institution can determine the facts of the case and determine if the signed copyright form was faked, which would be fraud. The journal could consider publishing a correction when the correct authorship of the paper is verified. This case raises the issue of how journals… - CaseCase Closed
Possible authorship conflict over an article published ahead of print
…and provenance of the data in article 1 and which ethics board approved the study should be checked/clarified in article 1. If the study is a prospective trial, online registration records could be consulted. Copies of ethical approvals for article 1 could be asked for. An important issue is to evaluate the intellectual input of Author 2 and therefore if they are entitled to authorship. If… - CaseOn-going
Authorship dispute over image
…journal would appear to be putting itself in a very vulnerable position by publishing the image. If the image was from research previously done jointly with the article author, this may be an authorship dispute about data ownership as well as a difference in data interpretation. If this is the case, the institution/s may need to be involved. If the letter is based only on an… - Case
An author plagiarising the work of the reviewer?
An author submitted part of his PhD thesis as a paper. The section editor of the journal asked the PhD supervisor to review the paper. This induced a very heated response from the reviewer who made various claims regarding the paper: The author does not credit one of the tests he uses in his work There is no proper acknowledgement of co-workers who perhaps should have been co-author… - Case
Duplicate publication
An author published a paper in Journal A that looked extremely similar to one already published as guidelines in Journal B. Of 48 paragraphs of text, 41 were almost identical. It has since transpired that several authors who were involved in the writing of the article published in Journal B have not been acknowledged. Prior publication elsewhere had not been acknowledged in the Journal A paper.… - Case
Order of authors changing between a submitted manuscript and a published paper
order. In cases of dispute the journal might want to sanction temporary withdrawal of the paper from the website. _ However, the order, which promoted author B, would have already been picked up for citation purposes. _ The journal could post a temporary retraction, but this would lay the process open to abuse by those maliciously objecting to the authorship order. _ A comment could be posted,… - CaseCase Closed
Omitted author
…approach and to give their response. The letter to the corresponding author included the name of the professor who had written, and the exact details of the complaint and the two possible outcomes he was requesting (withdrawal of his case or his inclusion as a coauthor). The editor went on to say "If the patient is indeed Professor X's and he (Professor X) meets the authorship criteria (as per the… - Case
Paper submitted by a PR company without the knowledge of the authors
A paper was submitted for which there were seven contributors, but no corresponding author. The only identification of who had sent the paper was an accompanying e-mail from a public relations company. When contacted by the editorial office, the PR company confirmed that the paper was to be considered for possible publication. The named contributors were then contacted and asked whether they ha… - CaseOn-going
Plagiarized figure
The Forum agreed that there are two issues here: the authorship issue and the plagiarized figure. Regarding the plagiarized figure, there may be copyright issues, so the editor may like to consider contacting a Copyright Clearance Centre to obtain permission to publish the figure in a review article. The editor may decide that the use of one figure is not a major plagiarism issue and he may… - Case
An accusation of fraud in a rejected paper
A paper was reviewed by two referees. The associate editor dealing with it recommended rejection as both reviews were critical of the methods, results, and reproducibility of the experiment. After the authors were informed, the editor-in-chief received an email from someone in the same laboratory, expressing relief that the manuscript had been rejected. The writer went on to say that s/he had m… - CaseOn-going
Coauthor fails to respond to request to confirm coauthorship
Prior to publication, our journal requires coauthors to respond to an email to confirm their authorship status and the author list. A coauthor did not respond to these emails, and when we contacted the corresponding author for help, s/he told us that his/her attempts to reach the coauthor have failed, and that s/he believed the coauthor was attempting to hold the paper hostage. - Case
Plagiarism
… The editor is potentially in a very difficult situation, and someone will have to search through the work of the entire group to see if this has happened before. The minimum charges here are that the authors have received gift authorship. Write to all the authors separately and ask for an explanation. Write to the authors’… - Case
Late reinterpretation and a new author
…as the corresponding author and guarantor of the paper. Author D’s name had not appeared even in the acknowledgements of the first version. The editor of the journal wrote to author C, asking for an explanation of the change of authorship. He raised the possibility of poor authorship practices. He asked for a written assurance from all the authors that they were happy about the revision, and he… - Case
The author who wasn’t an author
…she had provided some general advice on the simple statistical presentation of the data. Should any action be taken against the corresponding author, or should we simply explain what we mean by authorship and contributorship?…