- CaseCase Closed
Disputed change in authorship
A case control study was submitted to a journal. It was subjected to the usual peer review processes. After the required revisions, the article was accepted for publication. After acceptance, the journal received a letter from the corresponding author (author A) with a request to add the name of a new author (author B). The journal declined, stating that it would be unethical. The… - CaseCase Closed
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
An article was published in Journal A, investigating the efficacy and safety of generic medicine A. The authors did not declare any conflicts of interest. Generic medicine A is manufactured by company A. Before publication in journal A, the same authors published another study in journal B as a preliminary report. No conflicts of interest were declared. In a recently published art… - CaseCase Closed
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
A journal published an article about clinical recommendations for a condition that supposedly was the result of a consensus between two scientific societies of different medical specialties. The article underwent peer review and no problems were identified at that stage. However, about one month after publication the journal was contacted by one of the scientific societies raising concerns that… - CaseOn-going
Authorship issue related to misleading action of one author
Our journal received a manuscript which was a report of an evaluation and enhancement of an online clinical decision support system (CDS) for a specific population at risk of a disease. The online CDS had been developed by a national agency with a mission to support health promotion and disease prevention activities. Evaluation of the CDS was supported through contracts and sub-contracts. The f… - Forum discussion topics
Claiming institutional affiliations
…that, to The Research Organization Registry. More guidance on affiliations would be welcome since it has become so important as an indicator of research output, quality, credit, and prestige. Further reading - CaseCase Closed
Possible authorship conflict over an article published ahead of print
Journal A received an original article (article B) with three coauthors which showed substantial similarities with a single-authored article accepted in the same journal a few months previously (article A). The author of article A was one of the three coauthors of article B. The journal contacted the corresponding author of article B (Author 2) to inform them of the similarities between… - Forum discussion topics
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here?
December 2020 Since COPE drafted a discussion paper on the topic of predatory publishing in 2019, many more scholarly papers have been published on various aspects of this issue so there is no lack of research into the practice. However, while… - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…for 15 years at Stanford University and two years in industry before becoming a science integrity volunteer and consultant in 2019. Her work with her team in scanning the biomedical literature for images and other data concerns has been instrumental in detecting paper mill activity. Paper Mills are becoming a real problem. There are likely thousands of these papers and our team has…