- 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 p… - Case
Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality
This is a complicated case which involves possible plagiarism, double submission and reviewer misconduct. The timeline is as follows: In year n, a paper P1 authored by A1 and A2 was published in the English language journal X. The paper describes a theoretical analysis of a particular phenomenon. In year n+6, paper P2 was published in a non-English language outlet by auth… - Case
Deception in submitting manuscript for publication
A manuscript was submitted to my journal. The author, on his own accord, submitted the manuscript for review to several reviewers under the guise that this was sent by me. The author sent the following explanation: “In some of our previous encounters, you have indicated that finding sufficient cooperative reviewers has been a problem for you. In order to provide you with some help in thi… - Case
Is it a breach of confidentiality to send letters to the editor to criticised authors for comment?
(presented by Liz Wager on behalf of an author) (NB: COPE doesn’t normally discuss cases from non-members but as this raised some interesting general points, we thought it would be interesting to hear Forum’s views) According to the COPE guidelines, editors should “ensure the quality of published material… publish cogent criticisms from readers… [and] ensu… - Case
Duplicate submission
We received a manuscript for consideration. The manuscript was assigned to one of our section editors who sent it for review. Subsequently, the editor-in-chief received an invitation from another journal to review the same paper. The editor-in-chief recognised the paper straightaway, declined the invitation to review and alerted the editor-in-chief of the second journal of the duplicate submiss… - Case
Reviewer misconduct?
We have received threats of legal action from the authors of a manuscript rejected by our journal, henceforth referred to as journal A. These “aggrieved” authors claim that their manuscript was unfairly reviewed by a close competitor, who then used some of their findings in a paper subsequently published in journal B, without either attribution or citation. The “accused” scientist had in… - Case
The ethics of using privileged information
A paper published in one of our journals (paper A) provoked the submission of a correspondence article claiming that a minor conclusion of the paper was a misinterpretation and erroneous. The point in contention was a question of zoomorphology and our paper’s conclusions were based on analysis using a non-invasive technique while the rebuttal relied on more traditional techniques. We are bringi… - Case
Suspected contact between reviewer and an author led to coauthorship of the reviewer
A manuscript was submitted via our electronic submission system and processed in accordance with the standard procedures of the journal. This was originally a single author submission, and in the covering letter the author suggested two potential reviewers. The Associate Editor assigned reviewers, choosing reviewer A along the suggestions of the author, and reviewer B from his own list o… - Case
Possible serial misconduct in relation to coauthors and other activities
I am the editor of an international clinical journal and am facing a very unusual problem that does not fit readily into COPE flowcharts. Through a reviewer, I was informed that an author had submitted a paper without the approval of at least one of the other authors. This appeared to be confirmed by two other authors. In response to my bringing this possibility to the first author’s at… - Case
Paper published that is a verbatim copy of another published one by another author
This is a report of two cases of possible misconduct by the same author(s): one that was identified during the review process and one only after it was published. We believe the author tried to publish a paper that was a verbatim copy of one that had appeared in another journal a few years earlier. A vigilant reviewer of the “copied” paper alerted the editor that, on verifying t… - Case
Unethical withdrawal of a paper
The terms author A and author B will be used to refer to the corresponding and non-corresponding authors, respectively, of the paper in question. The term Editor will be used for Editor A of our journal and Editor B of the other journal involved. The term Editorial Assistant will be used to refer to the person who is in charge of correspondence for our journal. Author A presented a paper… - Case
Availability of reagents
One of our journals has published several articles describing use of a particular cell line X, which belongs to company Y. The authors included employees of company Y. A reader at a university, Dr Z, wished to gain access to cell line X, and requested it from company Y. He was informed by the director of science of company Y that ‘...it is Y’s intention to keep control of the integrity of the X… - Case
Author did not see reviews or revisions to the manuscript and did not give approval for publication
Approximately 1 year after publication of an article, we received a letter from one of the authors saying that they had not seen the reviews of the paper, the revisions of the paper or approved the final manuscript for publication. This was subsequently confirmed by the other authors who said that contact with the complainant had “broken down” and that the corresponding author had indicated tha… - Case
Simultaneous publication
About a month after our journal (Journal A) published a paper (Paper X), the journal received emails from readers that Paper X was very similar to a paper (Paper Y) that had just been published by another journal (Journal B). Some of these emails were sent to both journal offices. Paper X was submitted to Journal A a few days before Paper Y was submitted to Journal B and Paper X wa… - Case
How many “mistakes” are too many?
We published a randomised trial by six authors. Some years later, we received a letter from a researcher who had been looking into the trial in the context of a meta-analysis. She noted “implausibilities of serious concern”, including “a highly unusual balance in the distribution of baseline characteristics”, 95% CIs that were non-symmetrical about the effect estimate, and use of a… - Case
Incorrect allegations from the head of an institute?
After a number of appeals and revisions, and having satisfied ourselves about the results being “too good to be true”, we eventually accepted a paper. In September 2007, we received a letter from the head of the institute (and also a member of the university ethics committee) expressing concern about the paper. The allegations were: the funding source could not be that acknowledged; the authors… - Case
Allegation of fraud and insider trading
A manuscript was submitted to our journal describing a clinical trial funded by a commercial sponsor with almost all authors being either employees or having financial ties to the company. Although generally favourable, during the extensive peer review process several reviewers raised concerns about the data being “too good to be true”. The editors sought additional statistical adv… - Case
Retraction of article from 1994
Professor A and professor B has been in a dispute over a certain type of treatment for over 15 years. Professor A has accused professor B of killing a patient while he was (in professor A’s view) doing research on the patient without consent. Professor B has accused professor A of research and publication misconduct because he published a paper in journal X in 1994 that included a selected grou… - Case
A breach of confidentiality?
We ask our contributors to send us short mini-reviews of interesting articles they have come across in their regular reading. Most of our members also act as peer-reviewers and come across interesting articles as part of the peer-review process, before they are published . If they sent us one of those mini-reviews of an article they have peer-reviewed, and we kept the submission on file… - Case
Multiple failure to declare a relevant conflict of interest
During peer review of a manuscript submitted to journal Y, one of the referees indicated a belief that at least one of the authors had not declared a relevant conflict of interest (CoI). The article indicated that the authors had no relevant CoIs. The referee provided a URL to a press release that supported the allegation. It appears that one of the authors is the discoverer of a series of comp…