- Case
Supervisor publishes PhD students work
The PhD supervisor and a co-supervisor published a paper. The paper contained the work of a PhD student; approximately 90% of the paper was from the thesis. The PhD student found out when the paper was electronically pre-published. He contacted the supervisor. The supervisor’s first reaction was “How did you find out”? The supervisor did not want to include the PhD student as an author since… - CaseCase Closed
Publication of post-doctoral work
In 2012, Dr X started her post-doctoral training under a fellowship. She worked on the project until 2014, when the fellowship ended. She did all the work herself, and gave two seminars showing her results and progress, with positive feedback. When needed, she consulted with the supervisor or with a senior scientist in the laboratory (who has since resigned). By the time she finished, she had… - Case
Inadequately supervised research?
…committee took the view that this research used wholly inadequate methodology and worried that the first author, who had undertaken the study as part of her PhD, had been inadequately supervised. The question was raised with all three of the authors. The editor wrote to the supervisor, who it was suspected, would probably say that the methodology was acceptable and that s/he didn’t agree with the… - CaseOn-going
Inappropriate authorship on students paper
A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study which was a final year student's project was submitted as an original article to our journal on 30 April 2011. On initial review it was obvious that it was conducted by students and written by them, but the list of authors had the supervisor as the first author, followed by 13 students. The supervisor, who was also the corresponding author,… - CaseCase Closed
Confidentiality breach by an associate editor
The authors of a manuscript sent an official complaint to our journal regarding a breach of confidentiality by an associate editor (AE). The authors had been informed by the supervisor of a reviewer of a manuscript. After submission of the review, the reviewer received a confidential email from AE asking whether the favourable recommendation made by the reviewer would have been different if… - Case
Institutionalised policy of gift authorship?
…at their university. “According to the rules of the university, PhD students have one supervisor and several advisors. They have to publish at least one article with each advisor (whether the advisors help the students or not). Students do not choose their advisors and the university managers directly propose them to the students, so some of the advisors could not or do not want to help the… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute during the review process
…the paper. We asked Dr Y to confirm whether the author list on the paper was complete and to provide us with funding details. Dr Y replied that there were no other authors, and that the work was completely self-funded. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Should the journal contact the author's institution (and/or the supervisor's institution) to investigate?… - CaseCase Closed
Disputed change in authorship
…supervisor and their name should be included as an author. They also advised that author D (the previous author, presumably the supervisor which had not been disclosed earlier) should be put in the acknowledgements section only. The authors sent the required new submission statement signed by all authors, including author B, but without author D. The journal then received an email from… - CaseCase Closed
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
A short research article described a new method and tested the method, showing proof-of-concept that the method worked; the idea for the method is presented as the authors’ own. On publication, the paper receives an overwhelmingly positive response from the community. Shortly after publication, the editorial team is contacted by a PhD student and their supervisor who had published the… - 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… - CaseCase Closed
New claim to authorship of published paper
In October 2011, our journal received a submission from author A with co-authors B, C and D. After review and revision it was published in mid-2012. In April 2013 we received a complaint from author X, saying that the work published in this paper was his work, and that although author A had been his research supervisor at the time the work was done, authors B, C and D had either little or no… - Case
Self-plagiarism?
…the first author of the paper was the MSc student, now working at the other university, and the complainant was an author of the published paper. Thus apparently the authors included the person whose work was being plagiarised and the supervisor of that work, who is also complaining about the publication of the paper. The claim was that the other authors had plagiarised the MSc thesis and had no… - Case
Plagiarism case
…a senior academic and former supervisor of the first author, said that the data had been published without his permission or acknowledgement and he requested that the author be contacted and he and his colleagues punished for their unethical behaviour. Soon after, the same allegedly victimised head of department sent a second letter to the same editor saying that he was planning on contacting the… - CaseCase Closed
Plagiarism of a PhD thesis
…a supervisor of the PhD thesis. Hence there may be incorrect author attribution here. Should the author of the PhD thesis in fact be an author on the paper? At this point it is impossible for the editor to sort this out, so the editor should contact the institution with this information, presented in a neutral way, without making any accusations. The institution need to investigate who owns the data.… - CaseClosed: author misconduct
Duplicate publication in possibly four papers
…international standards against duplicate publishing and received an email in reply from a supervisor at their institution, apologising for this.We seek guidance from COPE on how to publish a retraction in our journal concerning these four manuscripts, or is another course of action more appropriate?… - CaseCase Closed
Conflicts of interest, corrections, and student research
…such a clinic. A reader contacted the journal to enquire about these two separate issues: (1) failure to declare interests and (2) failure to declare interests of supervisors. A correction was published explaining that the author was employed by a clinic providing these interventions when the article was published but was not when the manuscript was drafted and was no… - Case
Conflict of interest
…President and had previously published pieces under a different name which were supportive of him. Some of these pieces were cited in the manuscript. The author admitted that she had done this and the co-author, her thesis supervisor, stated that he was aware of these facts and did not consider them a conflict of interest. Not satisfied by the responses from the authors, the Editor asked the… - CaseCase Closed
Should this paper be retracted?
…data to another journal and Professor Y removed their own name from this work. Allegedly, thereafter the author merged these previous data with a new project and submitted this joint work as an original article to Journal Y. Knowing this process, Professor Y contacted the author’s supervisor, asking for retraction of the article. No response was received. Professor Y then reported the… - CaseCase Closed
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
…change if there were additional internal relationships in the research team, for example, if the first author was a student, and the author whose behaviour has been deemed to be questionable was the supervisor? … - CaseOn-going
Allegation of authorship misconduct
…author group have come by it; did the complainant ever share their rough notes with anyone? The other relatively easy check would be to see if there are any other obvious links between Journal X and the complainant; for example, is one of Journal X's editors a supervisor of the complainant? Answers to these questions would help to confirm that the article in Journal X existed and whether the authors of…
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