- Case
Conflicting authorship in a collaboration
An article by Author X was published in Journal A. The refereeing process was conducted along standard rules. Two months after publication, Journal A received a complaint from an independent researcher Y, demanding retraction of the article on the basis that the article was published with an author list representing only a minority of the actual collaboration, with no new experimental data or f… - Case
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D… - News
In the news: February Digest
…href="https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188 The Russian Academy of Science appointed a commission to address unethical publication practices in Russia. A report from the commission released in January 2020 was described as a "bombshell" leading to retraction of more than 800 papers, published in primarily Russian-language journals. Problems with plagiarism, text-recycling,… - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
…and able reviewers) and good practice (having procedures in place to encourage participation and involvement so as to actually obtain diverse views and opinions from reviewers). Recent initiatives to encourage diversity and inclusion in research publishing include a Diversity and Inclusion Manifesto of the Association of… - Case
Duplicate publication
Sixteen randomly chosen papers were examined from a PubMed search of 370 publications between 1995–2000 by the same author. Two papers were virtually identical, differing only in the form of the introductory paragraph and the list of authors. Neither publication acknowledges the other. Another paper reported a “second ever published case”, and two subsequent papers reported the same “second” ca… - Case
Suspected contact between reviewer and an author led to coauthorship of the reviewer
A manuscript was submitted via our electronic submission system and processed in accordance with the standard procedures of the journal. This was originally a single author submission, and in the covering letter the author suggested two potential reviewers. The Associate Editor assigned reviewers, choosing reviewer A along the suggestions of the author, and reviewer B from his own list o… - Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
…a repeat or ‘follow-up’ audit to monitor changes in practice. DUE methodology was used for a recent national quality improvement activity overseen across approximately 60 hospitals by an independent organisation funded by the government to promote quality use of medicines. Participating hospital ‘project teams’ were asked to identify a predefined number of patients from their surgical lists for the… - Case
Omitted author
A case series of 89 patients with a relatively rare condition was accepted for publication by the journal following due process through the peer-review system. The paper was published online within days of being accepted. A few days later the editor of the journal received an email from a professor (Professor X) from the same country from which the paper was submitted to say that one of the cas… - Case
Data manipulation and institute’s internal review
…explained that ‘cleaning’ spectra to remove impurity peaks was not a practice that was carried out by their research group, and they did not believe that it had occurred in this instance. However, the researcher who had carried out the analysis had now left the group and the original data files where no longer available. As a comparison with the original data files could not be made, the journal… - Case
Should this paper be retracted?
Journal Y received an original article for review, which was subsequently published online. The editorial office was then contacted by Professor Y, not included in the coauthors’ list, who referred to research abuse in the article and requested its retraction. In particular, Professor Y presented a careful evaluation of the article available online, finding that more than half of… - Case
An ambiguous plagiarism case
A paper was published in journal A. The plagiarism check tool did not show any similarity during the peer review process. Some time after publication of the paper, the editor-in-chief was contacted by an author who had published a paper in journal B. They claimed that the paper published in journal A was plagiarised from their MSc research project thesis and asked journal A to ret… - Case
Authorship issue
…approval of the manuscript version to be published. The editors of the journal told the authors that they would adopt the following procedures in resolving this issue: (1) Given the guidelines above, the editors hoped that the authors might reach an agreement among themselves as to the appropriateness of co-authorship for Drs A and B. Such an agreement would be the best option for… - Case
Author requests for certain experts not to be included in the editorial process
…the expert in the field. If an editor does contact non-preferred reviewers, other reviewers are also included. A non-preferred individual should not handle a paper as editor. The Forum noted that these types of situations can end badly if the author has certain expectations. Hence a suggestion was to inform the author that the journal will do their best to accommodate his requests, the… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: Issues related to papers submitted to “discussion” journals
…outlined on the journal homepage, discussion papers published in XXXD remain permanently archived, citable, and publicly accessible. Normally, they cannot be withdrawn after publication. This approach has been chosen for a number of practical and conceptual reasons, and it has proven to be beneficial for scientific communication and quality assurance as explained above and in more detail elsewhere.…- Case
Two cases of double submission
…course of action might depend on their seniority and therefore the degree to which they ought to have known better. A simple email setting out that this type of conduct is considered unacceptable practice might do if they are junior authors. If they are more senior authors or if the editor feels that this was blatant behaviour on the part of the authors then it might be additionally… - Case
Dispute arising from peer review of a rejected comment and published correction
…nothing at all. The groups have been informed of this, and that the journal remains amenable to publishing a statement if the two parties are able to agree a form of words between themselves. Nevertheless, the publisher regularly reviews its working practices and editorial policies, and this case has contributed to a change of the policies enacted by the publisher to reduce the likelihood of… - Case
Institution refuses to investigate scientific issues
…might be misleading, then the paper should be retracted. Getting further expert opinion to support the concerns of the editor is good practice. If the editor decides to retract, the retraction notice should explain why the journal believes that the findings are unreliable. The editor should inform the institution and the authors in advance, with the wording of the notice, and give them a chance to… - Case
Request to remove an author post-publication
A paper was submitted to a journal by authors A and B. The paper was accepted and then published in the journal. Several months after final publication, author A contacted the journal asking for their name and their biography to be removed from the article. Author A stated that they wished to distance themselves from the research. Author B also contacted the journal separately to… - Case
Questionable authorship information
…the corrected proofs it is stated that this author only made critical revisions to it. This suggests that they do not meet the criteria to qualify as an author outlined by EMWA, which states that a writer must ‘have made a substantial contribution to the analysis or interpretation of the data and feel able to take public responsibility for their research. In practice this means that professional… Dealing with editor misconduct
…it neglects the responsibility of authors. If published in an author's name, the author is ultimately for what it says; the editor only monitors the process, and this case illustrates why the editor can't interfere with judgments made by the author. The responsibilities of authorship are outlined in the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice…