- CaseCase Closed
Compromised peer review (unpublished)
A manuscript was flagged to editor X as having received reviewers’ reports indicating very high interest. At that point the manuscript had been through one round of review, revision and re-review, and all three reviewers were advising that the manuscript be accepted without further revision. On checking the credentials of the three reviewers, editor X was unable to find the publication r… - CaseOn-going
Compromised peer review system in published papers
On noticing a high volume of submissions from corresponding author A, editor X flagged up concerns with the preferred reviewers being suggested and their comments. Author A had in most cases suggested the same preferred reviewers for each submission, preferred reviewer accounts had non-attributable email addresses, comments were being returned very quickly (within 24 hours) and were often brief… - CaseCase Closed
Meta-analysis: submission of unreliable findings
A meta-analysis was conducted of about 1000 patients included in a number of small trials of a drug for emergency management administered by route X compared with route Y. The report concluded that administration by route X improves short term survival. Chronology The paper was submitted to our journal in September 2011 and after peer review was retur… - CaseCase Closed
More than a breach of confidentiality?
A journal received two manuscripts on the same topic in short succession.Manuscript A was rejected after peer review; manuscript B, submitted a few months later, was accepted after peer review. When manuscript B was published, author X contacted the journal to express concern about similarities between both papers and the fact that the first had been rejected and the second accepted. The… - CaseCase Closed
Review of a book written by an editor of a journal
Two scholars and professional colleagues, A and B, serve as co-editors of a peer-reviewed international journal. Editor A, who recently had a book published, has requested that editor B solicit a review of the book from a scholar in the field. Editor A would like this review to be published in the journal that they edit together. Editor B is concerned that this situation would put him in a situ… - CaseCase Closed
Reviewer asks trainee to review manuscript
A known expert in a certain content area was asked to review a manuscript. He asked if one of his trainees (not a content expert) could review the manuscript instead, with some oversight and as a training exercise. He stated that he would provide the trainee with a full explanation of confidentiality. The section editor replied that it was the particular expertise of the invited reviewer that w… - CaseCase Closed
Author creates bogus email accounts for proposed reviewers
Recently, as co-editor of my journal, I received a manuscript submitted for publication. The author had recommended two reviewers along with their Gmail accounts and affiliations. I was curious about the affiliation of one of the reviewers. I looked this person up and discovered they had a different email address than that provided by the author. So I usedthe email address that I found to… - CaseCase Closed
Transparency of peer review to co-authors
An associate editor of one of our journals has asked whether we can configure our online peer review system to restrict access to reviewer correspondence to corresponding authors. His concern is that some of the review materials (eg, a harsh critique) might be embarrassing for the principal investigator if accessed by a co-author who was a junior investigator or laboratory technician. Similarly… - CaseClosed: author misconduct
Case of figure duplication and manipulation involving two journals
The editors in chief of journal A and journal B, both owned by society C, received a letter from the last ‘senior’ author, also the corresponding author on one of the papers (author D), concerning separate papers published in both journals (paper E published in journal A and paper F published in journal B), informing them that one of the co-authors on both papers is under investigation for scie… - CaseCase Closed
An enquiry about arbitrating reviewers
Under certain circumstances, the editors of journal A use ‘arbitrating’ reviewers. These reviewers advise an editor where, for example, an editor has split reviewer reports or a rebuttal to a decision that was based on split reviewer reports. This reviewer has sight of the other reviewers’ reports as he/she both evaluates the manuscript and assists the editor, through their advice, to arrive at… - CaseCase Closed
Lack of trial registration leads to new concerns about study conduct and ethical review/approval
Following publication of an article, the editors noticed that the paper reported results of a clinical trial, but no details of trial registration were included in the article. (The journal does have careful checks on trial registration by staff at submission but this paper was not well written and it took careful reading to work out that it did in fact report on a clinical trial). We co… - CaseCase Closed
WAME case
This case was posted on the WAME (World Association of Medical Editors) list-serv and the editor (from India) asked whether COPE could provide guidance. An author (who happens to also be a journal editor) submitted a manuscript to a journal listed in one of the major medical databases. Having heard nothing for several months he tried to contact the editor to discover what was happening.… - CaseCase Closed
Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest
The editor in chief received a letter to the editor criticising a paper published earlier in the journal. The editor first told the author of the letter that he would publish the commentary after he had given the authors of the criticised paper a chance to respond. When asked by the author of the letter, he later added that he would also publish the letter if the authors failed to respond.… - CaseCase Closed
Submissions from members of the editorial board
Our journal has decided that members of the editorial board are allowed to submit manuscripts which will undergo peer-review directed by the present or former editor-in-chief. It can be difficult, and I would like to present one example. A group of authors (including one member of the editorial board) submitted five manuscripts during a period of 17 days. The handling of some manuscripts… - Case
Breach of peer review confidentiality
This case concerns a submitted review article that proposes a new theory in a field of research where there are two polarised positions. The original manuscript (R0) underwent peer review and was returned with reports indicating a major revision, which took several months. On submission of the revision, one of the reviewers from the previous round was asked to re-review. That reviewer (r… - Case
Is it unethical to reject unregistered (or late-registered) trials?
We would like other editors’ opinions as to whether adhering to the journal’s policy on trial registration may contribute towards the non-publication of trial results (and thus bias in the literature). All of our journals have the same policy on trial registration—for studies started before July 2005, we permit retrospective registration (providing it was done before submission) but for… - Case
Suspicion of breach of proper peer reviewer behaviour
An author submitted a paper for peer review with journal X on a topic that refers to a very recently published paper (ie, highly timely). The peer review was rather protracted because of long response times, reviewer substitution and the need to re-review the manuscript after a major revision. Just before the second decision was rendered, the author contacted the editor-in-chief with a s… - CaseCase Closed
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
We have been contacted by a reviewer after he spotted a paper he had reviewed for us (journal 1) now published in a second journal (journal 2). Both journals are members of COPE. The reviewer had advised we reject the paper when it was sent to him to review in September 2008. This was based on his assessment of the paper and also the supplementary material he was sent by us: protocol, CONSORT s… - Case
Publisher and stakeholder with misaligned conflict of interest policies
We have recently developed and begun to put into practice a policy on collection and declaration of conflicts of interest statements from any individual involved in contributing to or reviewing our pathways. This policy includes members of our editorial team, and contributor and reviewer members from our stakeholder groups. We have devised a standard form to collect these statements in a unifor… - Case
Deception in submitting manuscript for publication
A manuscript was submitted to my journal. The author, on his own accord, submitted the manuscript for review to several reviewers under the guise that this was sent by me. The author sent the following explanation: “In some of our previous encounters, you have indicated that finding sufficient cooperative reviewers has been a problem for you. In order to provide you with some help in thi…