- Case
Duplicate publication
We are fortunate to have very knowledgeable reviewers who are immersed in their specialty and in the literature. A reviewer informed us that s(he) was working on a review of a manuscript and thought that there had to be more qualitative studies on this subject. S(he) began to look and found three articles not cited by the author and then a fourth. The fourth study was published in anothe… - 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 refere… - Case
Failure to ask permission
I am a trainer and author of books on medical writing. It was brought to my attention that a chapter in a German-language book published in Switzerland was based almost entirely on my teaching. The first author is director of a privately funded research institution and the second author a member of staff. The second author attended one of my courses. There is a general statement at the beginnin… - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitte… - Case
An article in a high profile journal that potentially misappropriates research published in lower impact journals
It has been drawn to our attention that a paper published in a high-impact journal in the field of biological sciences (Journal A) draws very heavily on research published in the lower-impact factor journal for which we work (Journal B), as well as on work published in other journals. One of the authors of the paper in Journal B has contacted the editor of Journal A to register his/her concern… - Case
A breach of intellectual property rights?
We recently published article A by author group X on our website ahead of print publication and subsequently received a formal complaint from author group Y alleging that the paper constitutes a breach of their intellectual property rights. Group Y state that the described work is based on a jointly developed concept, initially resulting in a joint report (published 2004). In their view,… - Case
Plagiarism in a case report
I received a phone call from the first Author (A) of a case report published in our journal in 2005, who informed us that he had received a letter from an Author (B) of a research letter which had been published in another journal in 2000, stating that 12–15 sentences from the research letter had been copied in the case report. Having compared the papers, about… - Case
Fabricated illness: a case that cannot be published under current guidance
A preschool boy had a biopsy to confirm a condition from which he subsequently made a complete recovery. Later, he and his younger brother were reported by their female carer to have developed a possible recurrence and this looked likely on near-patient testing. At each review their carer urged us to undertake further biopsies on them both, but we did not feel that this was necessary. Th… - Case
Consent to publication for case details, and potential for journal violation of patient anonymity
We received a paper reporting on the outcomes of treatment of an individual with obsessive–compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder, which seemed not to respond to standard treatment. Following ethical review and approval, and individual consent, the individual was treated with several distinct courses of an experimental therapy. The individual’s clinical and family history, and their o… - 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… - Case
Plagiarism in a systematic review
The editors received an unsolicited systematic review and the paper was assessed for suitability for peer review, as is the usual procedure for this journal. The editor who assessed the manuscript noticed similarities with a systematic review published in the same journal last year and investigated the extent of overlap further. The new paper covered a more s… - Case
Duplicate publication in a non-English language journal
Two authors submitted a case report which was interesting but not written in the style of the journal. The editor therefore invited the authors to rewrite the case report, and resubmit it. They did so within a week. The case report was sent out for peer review, accepted and published. The head of department of one of the authors then wrote to the journal, stating that the case report had… - Case
Possible plagiarism case
One of the referees of our journal has brought to our attention a potential case of plagiarism. The referee feels that the a manuscript submitted to our journal plagiarises an article published in another journal. The authors are from an institute in a far-eastern country. We would be grateful if COPE could provide an opinion on this issue, as well as advice on what would be the b… - Case
Potential case of plagiarism
One of the referees of our journal has brought to our attention a potential case of plagiarism. The referee feels that the a manuscript submitted to our journal, representing a retrospective study of a cohort of patients with a particular condition, plagiarises an article published in another journal in 2003. The authors are from an institute in a middle-eastern country. The submi… - Case
Attempt at dual publication
In October 2005, our journal commissioned a review on a specific topic from an expert in that field. The commission was accepted, and a submission date set. This was followed up and renegotiated several times over the coming months. A first draft was received in January 2007, and assessed inhouse for feedback to the authors. Some suggestions were made regarding structure and content, and the ma… - Case
Author dispute over internal report
Author A was paid to facilitate a meeting and write a meeting report for internal purposes. He was paid to do this by author C’s company. The report was posted as a PDF on author C’s company website. No authors were listed on the report. Authors B, C and D co-authored an article that has been published in a journal supplement. It later transpired that the main substance of this journal… - Case
The judgement of Solomon: a case of two strikingly similar papers
In February 2007, author A and a colleague submitted a paper (paper A) to our journal, which uses double-blinded peer review. We sent paper A for external review. Four weeks later, group B submitted a paper (paper B). The editorial office sent paper B to external reviewers, one of whom was author A. Both groups of authors are known to us and well regarded within our discipline. The revie… - Case
Authorship issue
The editors of a scientific journal were sent a letter of complaint from Drs A and B who noticed that a paper had been published online ahead of the print edition authored by Dr C. Their primary complaint was that they were not included in the authorship and should have been. Other points made in their (rather confusing letters) were that: they had contributed to the paper in the sense t… - Case
Plagiarism case
A letter was sent to the editor indicating that three articles (one of them in the editor’s journal) on identical subjects had been published in the same year (2006) by the same authors, accusing the first author of all three articles of stealing data from and plagiarising a previously published article from the academic institution where the first author previously worked. The letter, sent by… - Case
Definition of plagiarism?
In 1997 a book was published (in Italian) on the life of an Italian composer, assembled through analysis of his mummified remains. Author A contributed a chapter on anthropological analysis (chapter X) and author B co-authored a chapter on paleopathology (chapter Y). In 2003, our journal published an article (in English) co-authored by author B on the paleopathology of the same composer…