- CaseOn-going
Authorship dispute and possible unreported protocol amendment
Our journal accepted a randomised controlled trial for publication which has not yet been published online. In the submitted paper, the randomised controlled trial is described as commencing in 2004 with completion in 2011. We have received an email and telephone call from an individual not listed as an author or reviewer of the paper with the following alleged disputes:• He was an invest… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2016: Authors, understanding responsibilities and managing expectations - Zoë Mullan, Founding Editor, The Lancet Global Health
… Download presentation: Authors: understanding responsibilities and managing expectations [PDF, 1034KB] … - CaseCase Closed
Disclosure and transparency issue
A paper was submitted to a medical journal, reporting the beneficial effects of a treatment with an expensive biological preparation. The author list included one employee of the company that produces and sells the preparation. Specific employees of the company were also thanked for medical input, epidemiological advice, programming support and copy editing; several authors declared having rece… - CaseCase Closed
Requesting authorship after publication
Our journal was contacted by an individual, Dr H, who had recently seen a published article and was surprised that he was not listed as an author because it utilised samples from a database that he established. (The article was published online in November 2014 and in print in February 2015.) He stated that the cohort has spawned many projects, but he was not involved in the “specialist area” i… - CaseCase Closed
Author impersonating corresponding author without knowledge of coauthors
We received an article which was accepted and published after an uneventful peer review process. The article was apparently written by seven authors from two universities. As part of our routine processes, all co-authors were alerted to a submission via the email addresses provided by the submitting author. Some time after the article had been published, we received an email from the cor… - CaseCase Closed
Inability to contact an author to obtain permission to publish
Author A was an overseas PhD student who successfully completed the PhD, and then returned home to a country with considerable political and civil unrest. It had been intended to submit a paper before author A left but time ran out. Subsequently, authors B, C, D and E, who were all involved in the work in one form or another (experimental design, performing preliminary experiments, data interpr… - CaseCase Closed
Handling self-admissions of fraud
In November 2014, the first author of a decade old paper in our journal and a 15-year-old paper from another journal informed us that he faked the data in two figure panels in the paper in our journal and one figure panel in the paper in the other journal. The main gist of the manipulation was loading unequal amounts or delayed loading of gel lanes. Self-admission of data falsification i… - CaseCase Closed
Author disagreement regarding article corrections
We received an original article which was accepted and published. The article was written by multiple authors from several centres, and the corresponding author undertook the task of standardising the content, making several corrections to the original text. The author proofs were sent to the corresponding author, who reviewed them. However, once published, one of the co-authors indicate… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute
In April 2014, our journal received a case report from author A with co-authors B, C, D and E. After undergoing a first round of revisions pertaining only to the paper’s format, author A excluded co-authors C, D, and E from the revised version and retained co-author B, without notifying the journal of this change. After this change, the manuscript underwent the complete evaluation process, comp… - Research
Publication practices in multidisciplinary teams: a closer look at authorship assignment and ranking 2013
This project led by Drs Zubin Master (PI) and Bryn Williams-Jones (co-Investigator) aims to better understand the norms, values, practices, and knowledge surrounding research integrity that contribute to authorship assignment and ranking in multi/interdisciplinary research groups, using public health researchers as a case study. Authorship practices are often shaped by disciplinary cultu… - Research
Authorship research project 2009
Although there is no universally agreed definition of authorship, authorship of research publications is a major requirement for academic advancement and a common cause of disputes among colleagues. Most research on authorship issues comes from biomedicine, where the authorship criteria are those of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. In order to make informed guidelines on… - Seminars and webinars
North America Seminar 2014: Persistent identifiers in the authoring process
…Download presentation: Persistent identifiers in the authoring process [PDF, 7400KB]… - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2011: Ghosts, Guests and other Distortions of Authorship
…Download presentation: Ghosts, Guests and other Distortions of Authorship [PDF, 1240 KB]… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2011: Systematic review of authorship research across research disciplines
…Download presentation: Systematic review of authorship research across research disciplines [PDF, 800KB]… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2011: Who shall judge: authorship, attribution and accountability
…Download presentation: Who shall judge: authorship, attribution and accountability [PDF, 1500KB]… - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2011: What is ORCID and Why is it Relevant for Editors?
…Download presentation: What is ORCID and Why is it Relevant for Editors? [PDF, 2410 KB] … - CaseOn-going
Plagiarized figure
We received a review paper and it was accepted and published on our website. We then noticed that one of the figures had been copied from a paper published in another journal. Before publication, we asked the authors if the figures were original or if they needed references, and the authors responded that they were original. After confirmation of the similarity of one figure to a publish… - CaseCase Closed
Author disagreement blocks submission
A paper was submitted to a medical journal reporting original research on human subjects. Two corresponding authors, author A (first in authors’ list) and author B (last in the list) were listed. The paper was sent to external referees but while it was under review, the editor received an email from author A stating that s/he had not read the paper, was not aware of the submission and did not a… - CaseOn-going
Authors’ contributions and involvement by medical communications company
The editorial office was contacted by someone who indicated that s/he has been working with a medical communications company on several manuscripts and has become concerned about the minimal extent of the authors’ contributions to manuscripts handled by the company. The work requested by the company goes beyond language editing, and involves developing parts of manuscripts into narrative on the…