- News
In the news: April 2021
…in 13 different journals, noted significant variation in how journals responded. The authors suggest a template to help support journals and researchers to aid in the "communication, interpretation and investigation of published errors". In order to be certain that any published corrigenda, errata and expressions of concern about a published paper are known to readers, Elsevier is - News
In the news: September 2021
…concerned that this may be just the tip of the iceberg of a new type of fabricated paper. SNOPES, a fact-checking internet resource, has retracted 60 articles written by co-founder and chief executive, David Mikkelson after a BuzzFeed investigation reported that the articles were plagiarised. The… - Case
Undeclared competing interests
A journal published an animal study on the use of drug X for the treatment of clinical condition A. The authors did not declare any competing interests. A few months after publication, a journalist contacted the editors to say that the corresponding author had several patents on drug X, was listed as an inventor of the drug, and that the public charity of which he is the director recently annou… - Case
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
The director of a research laboratory contacted our journal regarding an article published earlier this year. The director claimed that the documents and data used in the article were collected at his research laboratory and used by author A without his knowledge and permission. At the time, author A was a visiting scholar at the director's laboratory. The director also claimed that auth… - Case
Claim of plagiarism in published article
Author A of a 2008 review article in our journal claims her article was used as the "framework" for a 2013 review article on the same subject in an open access journal by a former student of hers, author B. There was no verbatim overlap but the format (comparison of two common conditions) was indeed similar (differential diagnosis, management, pharmacotherapy, and implications for practice). - Case
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
Editorial office staff at journal A noticed possible image manipulation in two figures of a new paper submitted by author X. These suspected manipulations involved images of gels which appeared to contain multiple duplicated bands. This prompted editorial staff to look at the submission history of author X to journal A in more detail. It was found that author X had previously submitted t… - News
Post-publication conflicts of interest
…advised the journal to review its requirements for declaring each author’s conflicts of interest, the funder’s exact role(s), and whether the authors had full control of the data. Case 13-05: After being invited to be a co-author at the end of the first round of review, an editor was listed as both author and handling editor… - News
COPE in 2023
…for important conversations to be aired, leading to the creation of publicly available resources. The 1999 Guidelines on Good Publication Practice note in the opening paragraph that “COPE is a voluntary body providing a discussion forum and advice for scientific editors, it aims to find practical ways of dealing with the… - Case
Suspect author
Author A has published approximately 150 original articles since ~1994, with ~100 on one particular topic. Since some of these events were up to 16 years ago, and there are no formal records from then relating to these studies, the only information we have is the memory of the editors of the affected journals in post at the time. According to their accounts, suspicions were aroused over the val… Projects Funded
…A report on this project will be published shortly. The abstract is available now (Download pdf 17 kb) (uploaded 13 May 2010).…- Case
Unusually frequent submission of articles by a single author
A sixth year medical student, with expected year of graduation of 2013 (Mr X), submitted 29 original articles and 17 letters to the editor in the period February 2012 to October 2012 to our journal. This amounted to an average of five submissions per month. Mr X is an author and corresponding author in every article. Of these, he is the first author of eight original research articles and 12 le… - News
Facilitation & Integrity 2023, a year in review
…Errors in analyses, reporting or inaccuracies in published articles (13 cases) Plagiarism (11 cases) Editorial competing interests (7 cases) Authorship disputes (7 cases) Concerns about the handling of responses to published articles (for example, rebuttals, letters to the editor, comments) (6 cases) Citation rings or… - Forum discussion topics
Ethical aspects of conference proceedings
…within the scholarly community. More information on JATS tagging and conference proceedings from the National Library of Medicine. Where there is insufficient information about study design and meta-analysis in a conference proceeding it may be difficult for scholars to link reports of the same… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-13/men-get-the-first-last-and-every-other-word-on-earnings-calls" target="_blank">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-13/men-get-the-first-last-and-every-other-word-on-earnings-calls Autonomy, non-malfeasance, Justice Critical Reviews in Toxicology is being taken to task for only publishing an Expression of Concern, rather than a correction for a 2016… Common ethical and editorial dilemmas of author misconduct: how should we respond?
…36 13 In most of the 212 cases (n=163), there is evidence of misconduct; in 36 cases, there is probably none. Common causes of research misconduct Duplicate/redundant/salami publication 58 Authorship…