- Case
Authorship without the author’s knowledge
A paper was rejected on the reviewer’s recommendation. The editor met one of the senior authors at a conference and out of politeness apologised for rejecting his paper. He was surprised to learn that the senior author had no knowledge of this paper and that the corresponding author had written papers using the senior author’s name without his knowledge in the past. This prompted the editor to… - Case
Author dispute and dual submission
A case report was submitted for consideration and, following favourable review, was accepted for publication by Journal A. All three authors signed the copyright release form, but about six weeks later a request not to publish the article was received by e-mail, which was attributed to a “misunderstanding and argument between two of the authors.” The editor wrote to all three authors… - Case
Unethical research
We have received a study in which patients with healed duodenal ulcers were randomly allocated to treatment with either placebo or ranitidine. Patients were also categorised as to whether they were type A or type B personality; the hypotheses being tested was that patients who were type A might be more likely to relapse. Patients did not have their H pylori status determined. Subjects we… - CaseCase Closed
Academic freedom
A final year student, and two other researchers in law, all from the same university, undertook research into a recent court judgment on the rules in relation to civil servants making public comments. Based on this research, a manuscript was drafted to be submitted to a double anonymised peer reviewed journal. The manuscript is highly critical of the judgment’s reasoning and impact. All three… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2022: Book wars
…in materials science and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and worked for the American Physical Society for nearly 24 years in their editorial office. Dan has been involved in all aspects of publishing including peer review, production, distribution, and personnel and financial management of journals. Book wars: the impact of the digital revolution on Anglo-American… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship issues from disbanded consortium
…hold during these checks. The corresponding author was unhappy at the delay in publication. They denigrated and questioned the integrity of the institution where these researchers were based and claimed that one of three authors was involved in perverting peer review in another, named, journal (not related to the publisher). The corresponding author made it clear that they would refuse to accept any… - 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… - CaseCase Closed
Controversy surrounding ethics approval
…department level, institution level or external board approval is needed. After funding is granted, the funding normally would not be released without checking approvals were obtained. If the research were to directly involve the other authors’ institutions, an administrative review by those other sites would be needed as a formality. Here, however, if the journal is satisfied with the court… - CaseCase Closed
Criteria to determine whether an author’s response to concerns about data validity is satisfactory
…The first is a preliminary investigation by the journal to see if there is a case to answer. It would be appropriate for the editor to ask a member of their editorial team to do a review of the material. This need not be a full investigation but one that is sufficient to ensure that the material used in the publications meets validity standards. The next stage (assuming that questions… - Case
Authorship dispute
A paper submitted to an international medical journal was reviewed externally and the authors were subsequently invited to submit a revised version. The initial submission included authors from two different research institutions and one author from a corporate sponsor. The initial submission was accompanied by an appropriate description of the individual authors’ contributions, a negative… - Case
A patient was given an experimental course of complementary medicine when a standard treatment was available
…experimental treatment without ethics committee approval; 3. how well the patient was informed. A full review of the manuscript echoed these concerns. The authors were asked to confirm/explain if they had received informed consent from the patient and ethics committee approval. They were also asked to clarify the treatment plan. In a brief email, the authors stated that they had received both consent from… - CaseCase Closed
Attempt to supress legitimate scientific results
The journal is operated by institute A, and the editor is an employee of institute A. A manuscript was submitted late in 2014 by authors from institute B, a similar type of organisation in the same country. The manuscript was reviewed by two referees who both recommended publication following minor revision. One of the reviewers noted that the abstract contained a vague statement related to… - Case
Plagiarism
A review article by an expert group plagiarised an article from another journal. It was largely a direct translation, involving large slabs of the text. Some of the authors are on the editorial board of the journal where the paper was published. There was no declaration that this was a translation of another article.… - Case
Possible deception because of omission of important information
…process Y but that this had been disguised by the way in which the drug had been taken. This was not described in the major papers, but has now been reviewed in a comparatively minor study. The editor had tentatively agreed with the critic to consider publishing a paper that discussed the mechanism, but it had been difficult to find out information on the trial protocol. - Could the authors have… - Case
Dubious surgery
A paper was submitted, describing surgery on the sexual organs of four women. The paper was poorly written and hard to follow, but it seems that this surgery was undertaken primarily because of the unsatisfactory sexual experiences of the women’s partners. There was no mention of ethics committee approval or of the women having given consent, not only for the surgery but also for taking part in… - Case
Plagiarism or redundant publication?
A manuscript was submitted with a covering letter clearly stating the originality and unpublished nature of the work. The authors stated that the results had already been orally presented at a meeting the previous year. Before sending the manuscript for review the editors discovered that the manuscript contained 60% of the Materials and Methods text and 90% of the Results section of… - Case
Redundant publication
…statistical reviewer. (3) Neither paper was referenced to the other, and the authors did not inform us of the existence of the paper in the other journal. (4) All authors signed the copyright form (5) The BMJ paper includes two authors who were not included in the other paper. This seems a very straightforward case of redundant publication. We have asked the authors for an explanation, and our… - CaseCase Closed
Comments linked to retracted papers
…href="https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines">COPE retraction guidelines state that: 'Articles that relied on subsequently retracted articles in reaching their own conclusions, such as systematic reviews or meta-analyses, may themselves need to be corrected or retracted.' However, the appropriate response may depend on the type of commentary in question. There are usually two types of commentary: one that comments on and interprets… - Case
Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports
Our journal has recently been the subject of an attack of attempted plagiarism by an author from a military hospital in another country. The first evidence of this was alerted to us by one of our reviewers who identified an almost word-for-word copy of a paper previously published in which the disease being treated was changed slightly and a few numbers but everything else, including the… - Case
Misunderstood requirements for authorship
…identified. It was his belief that such a practice was expected and condoned in this country. Professor Y did not catch this error since Dr X submitted the manuscript to your journal without his review and input. Your email and the resulting meeting allowed me to fully explain this misunderstanding to Dr X in hopes that he does not make similar mistakes in the future. It also provided a mechanism by…