- Case
“I was acknowledged but I should be an author”
A person named in the acknowledgements of a paper wrote to the editor indicating that they had been in part responsible for the analysis and interpretation of the data and should therefore be named as an author. I have had extensive correspondence (copies of emails, etc.) from both parties and spoken to both on the telephone. Clearly, earlier there had been an exchange of data between th… - Case
Duplicate publication in a non-English language journal
Two authors submitted a case report which was interesting but not written in the style of the journal. The editor therefore invited the authors to rewrite the case report, and resubmit it. They did so within a week. The case report was sent out for peer review, accepted and published. The head of department of one of the authors then wrote to the journal, stating that the case report had… - Case
Ethical dilemma involving religious beliefs
The editor and co-editors of a book have a query concerning an ethical dilemma involving possible authors for a book chapter. The book concerns certain diseases in pregnancy and the authors have been approached to contribute a chapter. Both authors are apparently deeply religious and have expressed a strong concern about contributing to a book in which views may be expressed that are aga… - Case
Author approval for response to mini-reviews
We publish mini-reviews of important articles from the medical literature. In order to give the authors of reviewed articles a chance to respond to the review, we have now started to contact the corresponding author once a review of their article has been published on our website. If an author responds, we wish to publish their comments underneath the review. Do we need to get formal ver… - Case
Author dispute over internal report
Author A was paid to facilitate a meeting and write a meeting report for internal purposes. He was paid to do this by author C’s company. The report was posted as a PDF on author C’s company website. No authors were listed on the report. Authors B, C and D co-authored an article that has been published in a journal supplement. It later transpired that the main substance of this journal… - Case
Signing on behalf of other authors
The editors received a manuscript from a Far Eastern country ready to accept. The senior author (who has spent a lot of time in the West) was in the US when the editors asked for final signatures to be sent. The senior author instructed his team to collect and fax signatures while he was away and this was sent to the editors. When the signatures were examined by the editors, it appeared… - Case
Authorship issue
The editors of a scientific journal were sent a letter of complaint from Drs A and B who noticed that a paper had been published online ahead of the print edition authored by Dr C. Their primary complaint was that they were not included in the authorship and should have been. Other points made in their (rather confusing letters) were that: they had contributed to the paper in the sense t… - Case
Declaration of contributorship
An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best articles in medicine, received an evaluation of an article whose authors were based at the same institution as the evaluator. The editor asked the contributor if he/she had any involvement in the study and received the following response: “I am based at the university but did not participate in the design of… - Case
Competing interest issue
An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best articles in medicine, received an evaluation of an article on which the evaluator was listed as an author on PubMed. The editor queried the evaluation and the evaluator replied explaining s/he had no involvement with the study but had commented on it. When the editor looked at the full text HTML version on th… - Case
Prolific authors
We have noticed some authors who are publishing at a rate that is exceptionally high. (1) An author of a recent submission has published over 100 articles since January 2005; he had published fewer than 50 in the preceding 5 years. This is quite a sudden increase. On average, he published 1 article every 8 days in 2005, and in 2006 this increased to 1 every 4 days. The author is on the b… - Case
Possible fabricated data: a conspiracy of silence?
I became involved in this issue after reports from doctors in a developing country that three papers in a systematic review published by my company may have been fabricated. The papers in question had co-authors in two other countries and so I contacted them. One co-author replied that he had concerns, but as none of the studies was conducted in his country, he had no data. He sai… - Case
Request for a retraction of a retraction
In October 2000, a journal published a retraction of a February 2000 publication of a research paper. In the same issue the dean of the corresponding author’s medical school reported the findings of an investigational committee that found, contrary to what was stated in the paper: · There was no ethics committee… - Case
Institutionalised policy of gift authorship?
A manuscript was submitted to our journal. After review we asked for revision. At this time we sent a formatting checklist which includes criteria for authorship. Two authors were removed in the resubmission. Eventually the manuscript was published. At this time one of the formerly included authors contacted us, asking why they were no longer cited. We asked the submitting author, who ex… - Case
Authorship dispute
The paper in question describes a collaborative study of several datasets (not all previously published). A putative referee was asked to review the paper and declined. However, this led to a written complaint asserting that (s)he should be an author as (s)he had made a significant contribution to some of the work described in the paper. After promising comments from referees, the existi… - Case
Dual submission
Paper 1 was submitted to journal A. The paper dealt with monitoring of a chemical element in various occupations in a range of workplaces. Samples were taken from the workplace air and bodily fluids of the workers, and conclusions were drawn about what metabolite should be measured in order to estimate a worker’s dose of the element. The chosen reviewers were experts in relevant biological moni… - Case
Author’s name removed from submitted article
A week after receiving a paper on a study for consideration for publication, the Editor received an email from person X claiming to have been the principal investigator of the study for the previous five years, up until he recently parted company in acrimonious circumstances from the hospital Trust in receipt of the NHS R&D funding for the study. Person X sent supporting evidence of his inv… - Case
Author dispute over need for retraction
The authors of a paper are in disagreement over whether the paper should be retracted. One group of authors (group 1) wishes to publish a correction, and another group (group 2) feel that is inadequate, and the paper should be retracted. Group 2 is concerned that one of the authors, author X, in group 1 is guilty of scientific misconduct. The remaining group 1 authors do not support this clai… - Case
Accusation of theft of a model
During refereeing of an article, one of the referees made an accusation of theft regarding a model described in the article. The referee and the authors had been collaborating on a review article previously, but had fallen out. The journal requested evidence from the parties. This involved several rounds of requests to the accuser, as the journal felt that the accuser was not providing anything… - Case
Ethics, institutional review and studies from private practice
A manuscript was submitted to our journal regarding a chart review of a novel treatment of a musculoskeletal disease, done at a private clinic in a western country. The patients had given informed consent for the novel treatment, but there was no ethical approval. We contacted the authors, who have replied that ethics approval could not be obtained, and indeed was not needed, because the… - 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…