- Case
Author withdraws manuscript upon payment request
We occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. We consider this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. We request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the a… - News
Case discussion: self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
…Case Summary Case 18-13 Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing Paper A was published in journal A in January 2018 (accepted, June 2017), but the editors then found that a similar paper, paper B, was… - News
In the news: August
…submission. https://retractionwatch.com/2019/07/18/exclusive-russian-site-says-it-has-brokered-authorships-for-more-than-10000-researchers/#more-103383 Two methods that European countries use for research funding decisions are… - Case
Editor manipulation of impact factor
An editor in chief of a major medical journal in a specialty field is also an author. The editor submits a manuscript to a competing journal in the same field. The manuscript receives moderately favourable reviews and the authors are invited to respond to the reviewer input and submit a revised manuscript. In the communication from that journal's editor in chief, the authors are asked to cite a… - Case
Dispute between two authors
A manuscript was submitted by author A to our journal. The content of the paper was controversial. We sent this manuscript for peer review by two clinical reviewers. We wrote back to author A requesting major revisions to address the concerns and issues raised by the reviewers. A revised paper was submitted and accepted for publication. Because the article was controversial, mini-comment… - Case
Retraction or correction?
A reader contacted us with evidence that a number of western blots in a manuscript published by us in 2007 had been duplicated from other published papers; in one case, the same gel was duplicated in the paper itself. I compared the original papers and agreed with the reader. Some of the blots had also been duplicated in other papers but all had been published previous to being published in our… - Case
Pre-publication in a discussion paper series
A submission in the economics field to an interdisciplinary social science journal was accepted, following full external review. Subsequently, the publisher wrote to the author stating that during editorial checks, it had come to their attention that a full manuscript of a paper with the same name was available in a discussion paper series and kindly asked that this version be removed from the… - Case
License for using a published scale
A researcher has published a paper in our journal using a scale published in 2008. She wrote to the scale developer in 2014/2015 at least three times (emails are on file) before the start of the project, but the scale developer did not respond despite repeated email reminders. No indication of the need for a license was received. In 2017, when the researcher published the paper using the above… - Case
Publication of correspondence relating to a paper currently online
A journal published an article discussing alleged partnerships between a well-known soft drinks brand and a number of health organisations in one particular country. The article was fully peer-reviewed prior to acceptance and now sits online in the journal’s advance access section of the website. A month after it appeared online, the Editor-in-Chief started to receive several written calls for… - News
In the news: July Digest
…href="https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/06/18/open-and-equitable-scholarly-communication/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline" target="_blank">https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/06/18/open-and-equitable-scholarly-communication/ The lack of black and minority ethnic (BME) people in leadership roles is a known problem, but is worse in the UK than in USA. Advance HE is exploring ways in which prospective BME leaders can receive mentoring, support and… - News
Case discussion: Editor manipulation of impact factor
…Case Summary Case 18-09 The author in this case was a journal editor-in-chief, who submitted a manuscript to another journal in the field. After peer review, the author was asked by the target journal’s… - News
In the news: November 2018 Digest
…Post publication discussion and corrections On October 25th, Retraction Watch released a database of 18,000 articles and conference papers which had been retracted since the 1970s. Revised principles of transparency and best practice released
…journals. DOAJ has more than one hundred carefully selected volunteers from among the community of libraries and other academic disciplines to assist in the curation of open access journals. This independent database contains over 18,100 journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities in English and 80 other languages. DOAJ is financially supported…- 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
Can a journal retract a paper against the recommendation of an institutional investigation?
A research article, published several years ago, was alleged to have integrity issues relating to some of the figures. Following detailed checking of the figures, the editors confirmed these issues and found more issues. The authors provided the raw data, some of which also had integrity issues. An institutional investigation concluded that the data were sound but the editor still feels uneasy… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: May 2018
…review guidelines, case discussions in quarterly COPE Forums for the last 12 months, our preprints discussion document (and that discussion continues to evolve), and on thoughts we’ve documented from our Education Subcommittee on - Case
Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
A staff member in our editorial office noticed a decision letter where a handling editor instructed an author to cite an article published by the handling editor. The staff member wondered if this had happened before and reviewed recent decision letters by that editor. This revealed a concerning pattern of behaviour—the handling editor’s decision letters (including reviewers’ comments) asked au… - Case
Retrospective registration, outcome switching and ethical approval
Journal A received a number of concerns from a reader regarding a paper published in the journal. These concerns were reviewed and sent to the authors of a paper, along with additional comments from the editorial board. The concern was largely around retrospective registration, and an inconsistency between the trial registry record and the published paper. An editorial board member conducted a… - Translated resources
El editor y los revisores solicitan que se cite su trabajo: caso
…originales para prevenir problemas similares en el futuro. Basado en el caso 18-03: Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work Related resources Seminars
…[13.18] Conflicts of interest in medical publishing — Professor Christopher Baethge, Chief Scientific Editor of Deutsches Ärzteblatt (Germal Medical Journal) and Deutsches Ärzteblatt International Download presentation [PDF 1679kB] | Watch presentation [12:16]