- CaseOn-going
A case with no independent institution to investigate
We were contacted by a lawyer acting on behalf of the last author (author A) of two research articles published in our journals. Both articles are co-authored by one other author (author B), who was the corresponding author. Author A claims not to have been aware of the submission and also raises concerns that the timelines and dates of the before and after photos reported in the articles are… - CaseCase Closed
Unusually frequent submission of articles by a single author
A sixth year medical student, with expected year of graduation of 2013 (Mr X), submitted 29 original articles and 17 letters to the editor in the period February 2012 to October 2012 to our journal. This amounted to an average of five submissions per month. Mr X is an author and corresponding author in every article. Of these, he is the first author of eight original research articles and 12… - CaseCase Closed
Nuisance author
…receive rude replies and he forwards on their emails which have again been tampered with. In fact I wonder whether the email he is sending out as mine is perhaps an edited version of a response from someone else as the English is not the same style as his. While I can continue to ignore this person and his submissions (although this is messing with our journal statistics!), I am very concerned… - CaseCase Closed
Unethical withdrawal after acceptance to maximize the 'impact factor'?
…(ie, none of the publisher’s journals would consider future submissions from any of the authors, 2) the journal would write a letter to the superiors of the authors outlining the case and 3) they would still be responsible for the Article Processing Charge which is payable on acceptance; ours is an open access journal, with the fee schedule clearly disclosed and agreed upon by the submitting author… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship issues from disbanded consortium
A manuscript was submitted to one of our journals in a special issue. The initial submission included 15 authors with 9 affiliations. The authors were part of a consortium which has now been disbanded. The manuscript was provisionally accepted for publication. At this point, three of the authors requested to be removed from the author list, citing irreconcilable differences with the… - CaseOn-going
Retraction of the first article in the case of duplicate publication
…the article without their agreement. From the date of submission to journal B and date of publication in journal A, we knew that the manuscript was under consideration in both journals simultaneously. We were therefore not satisfied with the authors’ response and, as we had the later publication, we proceeded to contact the authors, informing them that we intended to retract their article. In… - CaseCase Closed
Author withdraws manuscript upon payment request
…payment policy is clear and the author agrees upon submission of the manuscript; and (2) see if there is some way to provide financial assistance if there is truly a need. Journals need to be unambiguously transparent about article fees. Some authors may be unfamiliar with open access, particularly in specialties where it does not have a strong market share yet. The journal could be more up… - Case
Blatant example of duplicate publication?
A paper was submitted to one journal on 7 March, revised on 20 May, submitted to another journal on 21 March, revised on 29 May, accepted on 2 July and published in December 1997. The content of both papers is identical but each has different reference styles so were clearly intended for two different journals. The submission letter to the first journal clearly states that the material has not… - CaseCase Closed
Possible conflict of interest
…ownership of the database when the policy is announced. The journal can only encourage authors—submission of their data should be optional and it is possible that other databases will be developed in time. The Forum agreed that consulting with the wider community is a good idea. The editor could discuss this with the editorial board and also with other journals in the same field.… - 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
Duplicate publication or salami publication?
…two issue related to this article. (1) The author did not notify us, prior to his submission to another journal. (2) Almost all of the text is the same, indicating duplicate publication. Can this be taken as salami publication? How should we handle this issue?… - Case
Duplicate publication and now fraud?
…editors viewed this as duplicate publication because of the considerable overlap of material and failure of the authors to disclose the existence of the other paper. Both editors issued a notice in their journals of duplicate publication. It was also noticed that two of the authors were only mentioned on one paper and another author indicated that he had been unaware of the submission of the article at… - CaseOn-going
Is this previous publication?
…journal policy. Does the journal allow pre-print publication (ie posting of non-peer-reviewed findings) or are these considered ‘prior publication’ (journals vary on their policies on this)? Whatever the policy, the editor should also ensure there are no copyright issues. Otherwise, all agreed that the paper could be published. There are no overriding ethical issues as long as the dual publication is… - 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… - 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
Publication of a manuscript on an external website after acceptance but prior to journal publication
…acceptance for publication. Although formally accepted, the article has not yet be been published (neither online nor in print). In our journal, authors are required, at the time of submission of a manuscript, to confirm that the manuscript has not previously been published in other media, that they consent to giving our journal exclusive rights to represent, duplicate and publish the manuscript,… - CaseOn-going
Two reviewer reports contain a significant amount of verbatim textual overlap
Two of four reviewer reports received by the editor-in-chief of a journal contained a significant amount of verbatim textual overlap. Although of the same native (not English) language, the two reviewers are affiliated to institutions in different countries. The reports were submitted to the journal within 5 days of each other. Both reviewers suggested rejection of the submission… - CaseCase Closed
Possible self-plagiarism and/or prior publication
In October 2014 it came to our attention via one of the reviewers of a manuscript submitted to our journal that an identical article (100% identical) had been previously published on the website of the author. The submitting author had not made us aware in their submission documentation that the article had been publicly available on their website at the point of submission. Two different but… - CaseOn-going
Guest editors for single articles
Several scenarios were suggested as reasons to invite a guest editor to oversee a single submission: if the editorial board did not consider themselves to have sufficient expertise in the area; if an editor who had seen through the first round of peer review was then unavailable to moderate revisions; if the editorial team considered themselves to have a conflict of interest; or where the… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute during the review process
…affiliation B). A third researcher, Dr Z, was an author on the manuscript and at an institution in a different country. We asked Dr X whether they were aware of the manuscript from their postdoctoral researcher, Dr Y. Dr X was not aware and stated that Dr Y was funded solely by Dr X’s grant, and that they were working on a similar manuscript for submission elsewhere. Dr X requested that we withdraw…