- Case
Lack of patient consent for a case report, patient confidentiality
…consent was not sought from the child’s legal guardians as the child was placed with the social services and lost to follow-up. The authors believe the case report should be published to raises awareness among clinicians about potential symptoms of non-accidental injury in children, even though they cannot provide consent from the child or the child’s guardians to publish. The editorial staff… - CaseOn-going
Is this previous publication?
A manuscript was submitted to our journal and, on running a routine CrossCheck report, we found that it contained a 68% match (over 5000 words) to a report from a funded project by the authors that had recently been published online. Because the similarity match was so high, we rejected the manuscript. The author is now contesting the rejection, arguing that the funded project had… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship order in dual publications
…publish one article with two sets of author orders simultaneously in two different journals? Are there any potential issues with referencing? … - CaseOn-going
Reproducibility of methodology
A whistle blower contacted journal A regarding two published articles. The articles focus on the effect of energy healing on an in-vitro model of disease. The whistle blower raised concerns about the appropriateness and reproducibility of the energy healing methodology used. The authors were contacted to provide an explanation of the methodology as there was a lack of clarity… - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum 4 December 2013: persistent complainers
…How should a journal deal with persistent complainers? The topic for discussion at this Forum was ‘How should a journal deal with persistent complainers?’ Background Every so often a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. These complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these… - Case
Short case reports without formal consent
A manuscript was submitted about prenatal diagnosis of a specific cardiac disease. Short case reports of four babies who died were included. Although there are no names, we believe that there are sufficient details about the particular baby being described to be identified by the parents and by those involved in their care. The authors argue that: “As these deaths occurred over 13 years… - Flowcharts
When institutions are contacted by journals
A journal editor or publisher raises an ethical issue or concern about an article either before or after publication. The flowchart offers the institution a step by step process on handling the issue. Guidance for when institutions are contacted by journals… - Flowcharts
How to recognise potential manipulation of the peer review process
…authors on submission of their manuscript to a journal; another reviewer who is unable to peer review the manuscript. While there is an expectation that everyone involved in the process acts with integrity, the peer review process can be susceptible to manipulation as discussed at - Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…topic. Back to top Questions for discussion 1) Is it an acceptable, and ethical, practice for an author to use AI to write a scholarly article? 2) Can we detect whether an article has been written by AI? Is it important to do so? If so, why? 3) Can an article written by an AI trained on existing articles be considered original? 4) What… - Guidelines
Ensuring consent for publishing medical case reports
…information laws, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 in the USA. Journals should make a blank copy of the form available on their website and require authors to attest that it, or a form that includes all the elements of the form, has been signed by the patient or a proxy. If the patient or proxy has signed a form that differs from the form adopted by… - CaseOn-going
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
…submission system and which included all of the author details. In total, the email is estimated to have been received by around 440 individuals. One of the recipients of the email contacted the society’s editorial office (EO) to report what had happened. The EO contacted the editor-in-chief and handling editor of the paper to see if they knew anything about the situation, but the reviewer had not… - Case
Duplicate publication?
The editors of this journal check all articles against Medline for possible redundant publications. Two very similar articles from an author were retrieved when the name of the author was searched. The titles were very similar, except for the name of the disease. The abstracts had almost 50% identical wording. The two articles were not related to the article submitted to the editors, but as… - Case
Possible duplicate publication?
A journal accepted a paper and then discovered that a very similar paper by the same authors had been published in another journal the previous year. The latter journal carried the piece as a short report while the former planned to publish it as a full paper. The full paper carries extended research on oral and maxillofacial surgeons while the short report looks only at attitudes of… - CaseCase Closed
Balancing anonymisation and open science during peer-review
…should we ask the authors to anonymise this information as well? And what is the proper balance between open science practices and maintaining the integrity of the single or double-blind anonymous review process? Questions for the Forum When a manuscript sent for anonymous or double-anonymous peer review process includes information about the protocol registration and raw… - Seminars and webinars
J-STAGE Seminar 2021: Peer review
…Reviewer suspected to have appropriated an author’s ideas or data flowchart… - Case
The case of a physician in private practice offering an experimental intervention
A physician in private practice wrote to our journal asking if we were interested in a paper discussing his experience of offering a novel intravenous therapy to his patients. He hoped we wouldn’t discriminate against him for being an author in private practice. He had given this therapy to nine patients with a variety of acute and chronic illnesses, including himself. The physician says that… - Case
Referee with a conflict of interest
…a competing interest and that the authors of the paper submitted in August might have had cause for complaint had they known the referee was about to submit a related article to the same journal. The journal requires referees to declare a financial conflict of interest and asks referees to consider declaring other competing interests, although this is voluntary. Dr X did not mention at the time he was… - Discussion documents
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
Handling ethics cases can be a difficult, complex task, particularly when multiple papers and journals are involved. These guidelines have been developed to help editors conduct investigations with greater efficiency and effectiveness, and support consistency, fairness and transparency in communicating with authors and institutions. - CaseCase Closed
Publication of post-doctoral work
…written a manuscript solely on her work, and it had gone through several editing rounds of revisions with the senior scientist. There were five co-authors on the paper: Dr X, the supervisor, two senior scientists and a graduate student. In 2015, the manuscript was sent to the supervisor, who said "I find the text very thoughtful and balanced, with good interpretations", and had a few remarks.… - CaseCase Closed
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
…expert and unconflicted reviewers is proving challenging (not helped by the paper length and the sophistication of the paper). We are persevering but if we cannot recruit reviewers soon we intend to write to the authors telling them of the situation and asking whether they want to withdraw the paper. Questions(1) If they do not want to withdraw the paper, are we ethically…