- Case
Change of corresponding author after manuscript published online
On submission of a manuscript to a journal, one of the authors was indicated as the corresponding author. During the submission, review, and revision process, and also through copyediting and proofreading, the corresponding author responded to all emails, signed the publishing agreements, and was generally available. At this time, the authors of the manuscript did not mention a possible change… - Case
Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript
Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were high… - News
Case discussion: critiques after publication
…can be contacted and an expression of concern added in the interim. If the author remains uncooperative, the editor is bound to retract the paper for the sake of not misleading readers, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and other stakeholders. The retraction notice should transparently explain what post-publication review procedures were followed and what happened. As an additional… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…in 2018 to 64% in 2021). The importance of Sex/Gender Identity increased by 14% (from 77% in 2018 to 88% in 2021). It is also worth highlighting some of the free-text responses received. The replies to a question about what changed with respect to diversity, equity, and inclusion in their editorial policies/practices or organisation over the past 3 years ranged from “nothing”… - News
In the News: July Digest
…for improvement.http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/06/14/journal-data-sharing-policies-are-moving-the-scientific-community-towards-greater-openness-but-clearly-more-work… - News
In the news: March Digest
…and NFAIS, have announced a merger, with the new organisation named NISO and headed by Todd Carpenter.https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/02/14/niso-and-nfais-announce-plans-to-merger/ Journal management The deadline for submissions of responses to the… Text Recycling: Forum discussion topic March 2013
…should amend the literature by adding the missing citation and clarifying what is new in the subsequent publication versus the original publication. Journal editors should consider publishing a retraction article when: There is significant overlap in the text, generally excluding methods, with sections that are identical or near identical to a previous publication by the same…- News
In the news: August
…="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/07/21/book-review-research-ethics-in-the-real-world-by-helen-kara/" target="_blank">https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/07/21/book-review-research-ethics-in-the-real-world-by-helen-kara/ Misconduct Jennifer A Byrne is a cancer researcher who is committed to cleaning the literature as much as she is to adding to it. She began her crusade to do so after noting… - News
In the news: January Digest
…behavioural research. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0772-6 Ethical oversight ICMJE recommendations have been revised. The main changes are rephrasing COIs to relationships and activities, adding efforts for inclusion and diversity, and advising against citing predatory… - Case
Duplicate publication
In 2003 a paper was published in a specialist surgical journal following proper peer review. The paper summarised the experience of a group of clinicians concerned in treating malignancy in the Head and Neck using a novel method of therapy - and was a case series of 25 patients. The paper was not considered to be one of high priority but was published because of the paucity of information con… - Case
Potential fabrication of data in primary studies included in a meta-analysis accepted for publication
Journal A has accepted a meta-analysis for publication. As is standard practice for many articles accepted in this journal, a key expert (Professor X) in the relevant field was invited to submit a commentary on the paper. Professor X expressed concerns to the journal that “we believe that some of the papers included in the review could be either fabricated or at best are heavily plagiarised”. T… - Case
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… - News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…to manage. The five most common problems include: claims of stolen data, methods, or intellectual content (31%); incomplete, inconclusive, or suspicious institutional investigations (18%); undeclared conflicts of interest (18%); misconduct in conducting, analysing, or reporting findings (19%); and duplicate publication or salami slicing (14%). Specific author behaviours leading to disputes… - Case
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… - Forum discussion topics
What does peer review mean in the arts, humanities and social sciences?
…include adding non-native speakers to editorial boards to advise from a high level perspective in an important way; editors entering retirement offering mentorship outside the publication process; for society journals, pairing society members internationally with published mentors and see if they can meet the authorship criteria Post your comments and feedback below. - News
In the news: July 2020
…misconduct Stock Photo Paper Mill: Elisabeth Bik has looked into papers which contain images from the same library of about 100 photos and plots, suggesting they were all created from the same paper mill. This from the Wall Street Journal: "Internationally peer-reviewed… - News
In the news: August 2021
…href="https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/about/awards/" target="_blank">award has gone to CRediT, a high-level taxonomy that includes 14 roles that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to scholarly output. A name change policy has been launched by the17 US national laboratories and 17 publishing organisations and services. "The partnership between the national laboratories, major scientific publishers,… - Case
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
In June 2014 we received a manuscript by four authors from a well known research institution. They described a randomized trial comparing a variation in a procedure with standard care. In total, 200 patients were randomized, 100 to each arm. As measured by an interview, patients undergoing the new procedure were statistically significantly more content than those in the control arm. This manusc…