Includes agricultural sciences/natural resources, biological/biomedical sciences, health sciences including dentistry, nursing, allied health, veterinary science
Two articles published in 2006 and 2008 (by different author groups) had image integrity concerns that have been raised to the publisher. The journal verified independently that these image duplication concerns are valid and reached out to the corresponding authors first and upon not receiving a response subsequently sent emails to all authors multiple times.
This is a hypothetical situation based on a real-life experience.
A set of authors recruited the same patient cohort, collected data with two questionnaires, took one blood sample, but tests were done by two research students for two pathogens, and the results were presented separately in two theses. Subsequently, they sent different papers to two journals. No plagiarism has been identified between the papers.
An article published in a journal in 2023 appears to have been plagiarised in a possible predatory journal but the publishers are unable to get a response from the predatory journal or affiliated Institute.
What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is unlikely.
We have been contacted by an author of a published article who has requested to be removed from the author list. The author is third in the author list and is neither a lead author nor a corresponding author. The CRediT statement for the article reports that the author’s contribution to the work included investigation, validation, formal analysis and data curation.