- Case
Ethical approval procedural lapse
An observational study submitted to an institutional journal was sent for peer review. The authors were invited to submit a revision six months later. They did so, but had not responded fully to the reviewers' points, so they were asked for further clarification of their selection criteria, publication plan, and evidence of ethical approval. A paper by the same authors describing the same cohor… - Case
Foreign language duplicate publication
A paper was published in an Italian language journal, together with an English abstract. A second paper was submitted to a UK journal, one of whose referees spotted the similar content. Closer inspection indicates that both papers contain identical data and had an almost identical abstract and conclusions. The second paper does not reference, acknowledge, or cite the previous Italian pub… - 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
Reviewer/author conflict of interest
Dr B accepted an invitation to review a manuscript for Journal A. Dr B was aware only of the title of the manuscript and had read the abstract before accepting the invitation. He was also aware that he was to return his review within two weeks. When the review failed to materialise within the allotted period, the editorial office of Journal A sent the reviewer four email reminders over t… - Case
Dual publication
An English language journal received a study describing a randomised controlled trial. The paper was accepted and published several months later. Five months after its publication the editors were informed that a similar study had been published in a German language journal two years earlier. Three of the four authors were involved. It had been carried out over the same time period, using the s… - Case
Whose responsibility is duplicate submission?
Ten days after receiving an article for consideration, a group of editors received an email from the publisher informing them that the particular author in question had recently submitted nine articles to their journals, eight of which had been submitted in the previous seven weeks. Based on the similarity of the titles, the publisher had concerns about possible duplicate submission and had wri… - Case
Duplicate submission
The authors submitted a paper to journal A on genetic analysis of a potentially pathogenic organism isolated from children, analysed by school attended. Six days later, the same authors submitted a paper to journal B on genetic analysis of the same organism isolated from children, analysed by socio-economic class. The papers appear to be different analyses of the same data, and substantial port… - Case
Attempt at multiple plagiarism
In January 2004 a submission was made to Journal A from a laboratory in a different country. In April 2004 it was bought to the editor’s attention that the manuscript was a verbatim copy of a paper published in 2003 in another journal, Journal B. The only difference between the manuscripts was that the names and affiliations of the authors on the second paper were different to the first paper.… - Case
Undeclared competing interests
A journal published an animal study on the use of drug X for the treatment of clinical condition A. The authors did not declare any competing interests. A few months after publication, a journalist contacted the editors to say that the corresponding author had several patents on drug X, was listed as an inventor of the drug, and that the public charity of which he is the director recently annou… - Case
Retraction of false authorship
Dr X asked for a statement to be published to the effect that the letter he had published in the journal with two co-authors was not based on any work that he had done, but on that of his colleagues. The editor asked the other two authors why they had signed a copyright form in these circumstances. Both authors stated that they had not signed any such form, and when presented with a copy, state… - Case
Multiple submissions of a paper
A paper suggested that a cluster of symptoms, signs, and tests could be combined to diagnose pneumonia in general practice. The paper was rejected after being read by two editors, because it was preliminary and had not been validated in an independent population. The authors submitted a new manuscript the following year, describing the same patients and focusing on the accuracy of individual sy… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
Several years after a case series was published, a journalist with serious allegations of research misconduct contacted the editor. These allegations were that: - Ethics approval had not been obtained, contrary to a statement in the paper; and that the reported study was completed under the cover of ethics approval granted to a different study - Contrary to a statement in the paper that the par… - Case
Attempts to draw attention to potential duplicate publication
A medical student brought a case of duplicate publication in two journals in the same specialty to the attention of an editor of a third journal. The article in Journal A was published in 1997 and the article in Journal B was published in 1999. The editor wrote to both journals and asked them to investigate. The editor wrote several times over two years before he retired. The editor received a… - Case
Dual publication and attempted retraction by the author
An author who published an article in Journal A at the end of the year wrote to advise that it would have to be retracted on the grounds that his PhD tutor, Professor X, had already submitted a similar manuscript more than a year earlier to another journal. In the absence of any contact from the tutor, the author had assumed that this manuscript had not been accepted and went ahead with her own… - Case
Duplicate publication in a foreign language
A published article was subsequently republished in a foreign language journal, with exactly the same results and text. Just a few extra references were added. The senior author had written to apologise for the foreign language publication, but argued that the second publication was a different paper. But the editor disagreed: the foreign language publication had not referenced the origi… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
A published study reviewed the use of particular devices for performing a clinical manoeuvre. One of the authors worked for a consultancy, but declared that he had no conflict of interest. Subsequently, the journal received a letter pointing out that the consultancy had been set up explicitly to persuade governments and their regulatory organisations of the virtues of new drugs and technologies… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
The authors of a paper published in another journal wrote to the editor of Journal A, complaining of apparent blatant plagiarism of their work by N et al. , whose paper had been published in the journal earlier in the year. Further investigation revealed that the text of the two papers was almost identical. S et al. had used one drug and N et al. had used a different one of the same class. The… - Case
Sloppiness or deception?
A case control study that links miscarriage to a particular event was published in Journal A. The paper says that most women were pregnant when interviewed. Whether or not they had miscarried when interviewed matters because of “recall bias.” In fact, most of the women who miscarried had already miscarried and so were not pregnant. The statement that most of the women were pregnant is “true” be… - Case
Potential redundant publication
A group of authors from the same specialty unit published a study in Journal A on all prehospital X procedures. They then sent another paper on X procedure in a subgroup of patients to Journal B. Paper B references paper A, but does not make it apparent that there is any overlap in these studies. On questioning by editor B, they stated that no patients in paper B were included in the previous s… - Case
Potential duplicate publication
Following publication of a report, a country’s national health ministry set up a pilot study on two sites to examine the feasibility and acceptability of screening for infection X. The pilot study was co-ordinated by a national agency. It was agreed from the outset that the agency would lead on analysing data, co-ordinating any publications, and that the major publication output would involve b…