- Case
A breach of confidentiality?
We ask our contributors to send us short mini-reviews of interesting articles they have come across in their regular reading. Most of our members also act as peer-reviewers and come across interesting articles as part of the peer-review process, before they are published . If they sent us one of those mini-reviews of an article they have peer-reviewed, and we kept the submission on file… - 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
A case of child abuse
Child abuse is a common but underdiagnosed problem in our country. The abuse ranges from minor injury to severe head trauma. The true incidence of intentional head injury in children remains uncertain. We published a case of child abuse with blunt head trauma with intracranial haemorrhage presenting as loss of consciousness simulating a diabetic ketoacidosis. We received a complaint from… - CaseCase Closed
A case of duplicate publication
Ten years ago, the author published a paper on the same subject in his country’s specialty journal. The first report was short and the product of the author’s graduate work. The publication was in their country’s language. (Recently, the journal has been translating the abstracts of their previous publications into English, but the body of the text is still in their language.) Subsequently, t… - Case
A case of duplicate publication?
A paper was accepted and published in journal A which dealt with a cohort of patients with an unusual respiratory pathogen. A similar paper had been published in a US journal B a few months before. It dealt with more or less the same patients (a few more had been added) and provided some extra secondary outcome data but with the same conclusions. The editor of journal A considered this… - 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
A case of plagiarism
A paper with five authors was submitted from a university hospital in a Middle-Eastern country. One of the reviewers complained that it extensively plagiarised one of his own publications. Examination showed that about 30% of the text and tables had been copied. The results were original, and in some cases had simply been slotted into the plagiarised text. The paper was rejected by email… - CaseCase Closed
A case of plagiarism?
A paper was published in our journal. A reader contacted us and informed us that the whole of the introduction of the paper was copied directly from another publication. The editor-in-chief suggested retracting the paper immediately. However, the author insists on publishing a correction. They do not want to publish a retraction as this will affect their future career development.Question… - CaseOn-going
A case of salami slicing
A reviewer of our journal noticed similarity between a published paper (P1) and a manuscript under review (P2). At the same time, a member of the editorial team noticed similarity between another accepted manuscript for publication (P3) and both paper P1 and manuscript P2. All three papers were submitted by the same authors based on the same trial, reporting three different endpoints measuring… - 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
A case report of an experimental therapy, submitted by the patient
We received a pre-submission enquiry about whether we were interested in publishing a case report of a novel therapy that provided “a complete cure for heart disease.” The therapy involved a “membranotrophic drug” combined with diet and exercise. The therapy had been given to a patient who had experienced a myocardial infarction. Eighteen months later, the patient was apparently free o… - CaseOn-going
A case with no independent institution to investigate
We were contacted by a lawyer acting on behalf of the last author (author A) of two research articles published in our journals. Both articles are co-authored by one other author (author B), who was the corresponding author. Author A claims not to have been aware of the submission and also raises concerns that the timelines and dates of the before and after photos reported in the articles are i… - Case
A claim of stolen data and a demand for retractions
The publishers received an email from author B about a recently published paper, which passed peer review and had been available online for about a month. In this email, author B claimed that he and another colleague C had determined the peptide sequence in question and had not published it yet, nor given permission for it to be published. He claimed that author A had access to his unpublished… - Case
A commentary on a piece of (unethical) research
We have received a paper in which the authors have exposed a group of babies to physiologically unnatural circumstances. These circumstances do however arise quite regularly in some peoples’ lives. None of the babies had anything wrong with them, but some of them were siblings of babies who had died. Some of the babies showed physiological changes in the unnatural circumstances, which raised th… - Case
A falling out
A research letter was submitted from a team of investigators,A, B, C, and D. In their covering letter they reported that: A was involved in planning the study, collecting patient samples, and in writing the manuscript; B measured IL-10 polymorphisms and analysed the results; C was involved in supervising the measurement of polymorphisms and in writing the manuscript; D was involved in planning… - Case
A first report, not followed by a second
In 1984, journal X published a brief report of a randomised trial as a letter to the editor. No full publication of this trial followed, despite calls for this from colleagues in the field. It took the intervention of a regional research ethics committee and a dean to persuade the investigators to write a final manuscript.This paper has still not been submitted for publication, although some of… - Case
A further case of redundant publication
A paper was submitted to a UK specialist medical journal. At review, one of the reviewers alerted the editor to the fact that a very similar paper had been published in a US specialist title. It seems very likely that the reports describe the same randomised controlled trial. The only piece of new information was not an important outcome of the trial. The authors did not disclose the existence… - Case
A highly critical obituary
A journal published a highly critical obituary, which provoked uproar and prompted the deceased’s family to complain to the national body responsible for regulating the media. The journal believed that the basis of the criticisms were accurate and acknowledged that it had not cited sufficient evidence in the obituary. The journal was considering whether to publish the evidence in full. The jour… - Case
A lost author and a new hypothesis
A paper was published in January 1998,and seven authors were credited. B was thanked for his contribution in the acknowledgements section. One year later B wrote to the editor, outlining two alleged incidents related to this paper. First, the cohort reported in the January 1998 paper was one that B had been working on since the early 1990s. In 1992–3 he sought collaboration with another researc… - Case
A member of an author group listed on a paper denies authorship
We publish “mini-reviews” of published articles. Our faculty of eminent researchers and clinicians write these evaluations. One of the conditions we insist on from our faculty is that they may not evaluate work on which they are an author. We received a review of a paper, the authorship of which was listed as: Name A, Name B, Name C; study group X As the reviewer was a member of “…