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  • Case

    Suspected plagiarism

    This is regarding a case of suspected plagiarism in our journal. I as editor have received a manuscript which was published by me in our January 2006 issue and on subsequent follow up after availability of plagiarism detection software the manuscript - a review article - seems to have a lot of similarities to another article written in a website and though the language is not the same -the flow…
  • Case

    A case of scientific misconduct?

    We had a paper submitted reporting results of a randomized trial. The trial seemed to look at immune responses in lung fluid in participants receiving either a particular vaccine or placebo. We got a copy of the trial protocol before going to peer review as per our normal editorial policy, and made sure the trial was registered. One reviewer pointed out major discrepancies (principally i…
  • Case

    Duplicate submission

    An article was submitted simultaneously to our journal and another journal (who is a member of COPE) on the same date. Both journals received letters saying that the article had not been submitted to another journal. When they received a favourable response from the other journal, and the article was published, we were informed by the authors that they wished to withdraw the paper from our jour…
  • Case

    Conflict of interest

    After peer-review, a general medical journal published a household survey of violence following a coup against the country’s elected President. The survey revealed high levels of violence and human rights abuses, only a small minority of which were attributed to supporters of the deposed regime. The manuscript stated that none of the interviewers had political affiliations and the authors decla…
  • Case

    Possible duplicate publication

    An article by a Far Eastern group was published in our journal in November 2005. We were later alerted by an interested reader that the same article, slightly changed, was published in an American journal. I contacted the American journal and the article will now be officially retracted from that journal. Part of the explanation could be poor communication between the authors, but I am not sure…
  • Case

    Possible plagiarism

    A Middle Eastern author submitted four papers on different subjects at around the same time (two single author, two with other authors). During in-house assessment, it was noted that two of the papers were very similar to previously published papers. Fuller inspection of the complete papers indicated unequivocally that plagiarism had taken place—in one of the papers even the figures have been c…
  • Case

    Possible breach of confidentiality by a reviewer

    One of the figures in an article under review was said by the authors to appear in a presentation given at a conference while the paper was still under review and from this identified the reviewer and accused this person of abusing their position. We could not confirm to the authors that they had correctly identified the reviewer. The authors contacted the reviewer directly and also contacted t…
  • Case

    Consideration of publishing raw data

    Our journal has received a submission regarding clinical trial results. The authors wish to include the “raw data” as an appendix to the manuscript. The study was completed several years ago and was controversial at the time. The authors wish to publish the raw data to allow the public to view the findings and make their own decisions about the trial. We do not know the best way to handle this…
  • Case

    Potential plagiarism

    In 2003, Journal A published an original article. In 2006, the editor received a complaint of plagiarism relating to a case report published by Journal B in 2000. The introduction of both articles had one identical paragraph and some paragraphs in the discussion were similar. The article published by Journal A did not reference Journal B, despite: (a) being easy to find on a simpl…
  • Case

    Post-publication evaluation and manufacturer information

    An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best papers in medicine, received an evaluation of a cost effectiveness study assessing a new therapy. The evaluator quoted estimated amounts of cost saved when using the new therapy compared with other therapies, naming the manufacturer of the new therapy. The evaluator declared in his/her competing interests tha…
  • Case

    Repetitive duplicate submission to multiple journals and redundant publication

    This case came to light when the editors of two journals (J1 and J2) established that the same manuscript (MsA) had been submitted to both journals simultaneously. On bringing this information to the attention of the author, stating the seriousness with which this action was viewed and requesting an explanation, the author apologised and withdrew the manuscript from both journals w…
  • Case

    Suspected systematic data fabrication

    The editor received correspondence from a third party suggesting that a paper published in 2005 in the journal by four co-authors contained suspect data. The suspicion was based on the observation that in three separate figures all error bars were identical. Indeed, the third party subjected 32 publications from the same group of authors to independent statistical appraisal and concluded that 2…
  • Case

    Duplicate publication

    Author X contacted the editor of Journal A to enquire whether the journal would be interested in a review of a new concept in the treatment of a disease, written by author X and two co-authors. Author X said that his co-authors had suggested writing the paper for another journal but he had convinced them to submit the paper to Journal A. The editor invited submission and, after peer review, the…
  • Case

    A case of parallel publication?

    Paper A appeared in a foreign language journal, together with an English abstract. Paper B was submitted to us, and one of our referees alerted us to the similar content. Closer inspection, including retrieval of the original foreign language manuscript and review by a deputy editor with a working knowledge of that language, and inspection of the tables by the editor and another editor,…
  • 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

    Ethics approval for audit 2

    A group in a developed country performed an audit of pregnancy and its outcome in a group of 250 women with congenital heart disease. There were four maternal deaths of women in the series. It was decided to write up the audit. The paper reports aggregated statistics classified by diagnosis, but also contains a brief account of the factors associated with the four deaths (an account of one of t…
  • Case

    Ethics approval for audit 3

    In this case, an international organisation wished to study the use of various regimens for medical termination of pregnancy in a developing world setting where termination of pregnancy is not supported by the state. They have performed an audit and have obtained data which will be of considerable value in other similar settings around the world. However, they are not willing to state the ident…
  • Case

    Ethics approval for audit 1

    A group in a developing country decided to do a survey of maternal mortality in relation to the available local facilities in the various regions of their country. They set up a small committee to look at the incidence and causes. They obtained the permission of the local authorities, including the local elders, community leaders, and local health care providers, to scrutinise records and asses…
  • 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…

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