- Case
Reviewer requesting addition of multiple citations of their own work
A handling editor noticed a reviewer report where the reviewer instructed the author to cite multiple publications by the same reviewer in their manuscript. The handling editor noted a similar instance involving this reviewer from the past and requested the editorial office to look into his reviewing history. This uncovered a concerning pattern of behaviour where the reviewer habitually asked… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
- The failure to declare conflicts of interests is common. - Journals do have editorial responsibility as to how papers are presented. In this instance the journal’s efforts had been overshadowed by the authors’ press conference. - The paper reported preliminary findings, which had been overlooked by the media. - The journal’s retraction had been appropriate. - No action required at present,… - Case
Balancing anonymisation and open science during peer-review
As an editor of a journal with a double-anonymous peer review system, I often wonder about the right balance between open science practices and anonymisation of the manuscript for the review process. How much anonymisation is enough while being compatible with open science dissemination? In particular, when a manuscript includes information about the protocol registration and raw data,… - News
International Workshop for Journal Editors, Indonesia
…Directory of Open Access Journals, and Open Journal Systems. The International Workshop for Journal Editors is a regular event that takes place in different cities in Indonesia for selected cohorts of journal editors. The aim is for the editors to learn from invited overseas speakers how to assess and improve the quality of their journals and journal management.… - Case
Redundant publication
…A had used a different statistical analysis and had looked at different problems. Neither paper cross-referenced the other and the authors had signed copyright forms in which they had agreed that the research had not been previously published in whole or in substantial part elsewhere. Journal A asked the authors to comment. They denied that the papers were similar. They admitted that the female… - Case
No ethics approval or informed consent?
…informing them that he is contacting the ethics committee. The committee noted that the ethics committee may not be in a position to take any action and may in fact be part of the problem. If this is the case, the advice was to contact the authors’ institution and to inform the authors that this course of action is being taken. The committee emphasised that the editor should not get involved in an… - News
In the news: November 2018 Digest
…-massive-database-retracted-papers-reveals-about-science-publishing-s-death-penalty" target="_blank">An analysis of the database was published in the journal Science. This concludes that the increase in retractions in recent years might reflect better editorial practices. Not all retractions involve misconduct, 40% of the retractions in the database are due to errors, problems with reproducibility, and other issues. Around 50% of the retractions are due to “fabrication, falsification, or… - Seminars and webinars
Post-publication critiques
…problems with a publication no matter how long ago it was made available. Editors and readers are now more prepared to engage with concerns and this has been aided by the emergence of respected ‘sleuths’ and commenting sites like PubPeer. It would be beneficial for universities and funders to place greater emphasis on data sharing which would in turn encourage more careful work and accountability.… - Case
A case of plagiarism
The general view was that the three year ban was harsh and perhaps not appropriate. Most members agreed that banning an author is not good policy and could lead to legal problems. Also, in dealing with cases from outside Europe and North America, we should bear in mind that plagiarism may be unintentional as authors may be less familiar with publication procedures. Hence there is a case here… - News
In the news: February Digest
…research in the biomedical sciences.https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/01/09/guest-post-mla-insight-how-to-buy-whisky/?informz=1 In order to increase inclusion and diversity, we have to call attention to the problem and then have resources to correct it. The… - Case
Concerns over the withdrawal of a complaint
Journals are obliged to pursue a complaint once made as they have been made aware that there is a potential problem with the article. It is therefore not possible for authors to retract and halt the process and the editors are correct to continue with their investigation. However, there are several mitigations that can be taken to protect them. First, the individuals who raised the concern can… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
A published study reviewed the use of particular devices for performing a clinical manoeuvre. One of the authors worked for a consultancy, but declared that he had no conflict of interest. Subsequently, the journal received a letter pointing out that the consultancy had been set up explicitly to persuade governments and their regulatory organisations of the virtues of new drugs and… - News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…to raise issues with respect to the research and to raise questions regarding the institutional vetting of research protocols through the research ethics committee. As the COPE guideline on the General Approach to Publication Ethics for the Editorial Office (October 2018) notes “Ethical issues are often complex and the approach will vary depending on the specific problem and the resources of the… - News
Vacancies on COPE Council
…and team to manage the day to day affairs of the organisation. Council currently comprises six subcommittees - Council Members will be expected to join either the Membership subcommittee or the Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee initially, to gain a deeper understanding of how COPE works and the… - Case
Ethical concerns about a study involving human subjects
…that approved the study; whether they had informed consent from the patient and healthy volunteers; whether the trial had been registered before it commenced; how the patient and controls were recruited; what information the patient and controls were given before they agreed to participate; where the study took place; what safety/monitoring was in place in case of any adverse effects; what approval… - Case
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… - Case
Possible suppression of data
…competitor. The information is also relevant to a wider debate about the evidence required for regulatory agencies to licence related drugs. For the company there was an important issue at stake in terms of the outcome of this research. This core problem involved refusal of the pharmaceutical manufacturer to provide crucial raw data (principally randomisation and event codes and… - Case
Researchers give an experimental therapy to patients based on a laboratory study published in our journal
We published a paper in the journal which reported on microarray expression profiling of cell lines from a specific type of cancer (not named here, to preserve anonymity). That paper suggested that a particular compound might affect the function of a protein expressed in the cell lines; this compound could therefore be a possible candidate drug for use in this type of cancer, which might be…