2017

Journal A received a manuscript—a randomised, controlled, double anonymous, parallel clinical trial. The manuscript was reviewed by two specialist reviewers who suggested acceptance after revision. One of the important points that was asked was to provide the “registration number of the RCT”. As our journal is a member of the ICMJE, we reviewed the instructions of the ICMJE and found that there may be rare exceptions of failure to registration.

Journal A is dealing with two separate cases of double submission:

The author of an accepted research paper (that showed some benefits for a controversial treatment) contacted the journal shortly prior to publication of the paper. It is the policy of our journal not to share commissioned editorials with authors ahead of time. This author had, however, received a copy of the journal press release in preparation for a press briefing.

An intentional satire of a randomised controlled trial was published in a journal. In addition to multiple overt clues that the article was fake in the text, the article ended with a clear and direct statement in the acknowledgments that it was satire.

The associate editor of journal X identified author Y on a submission paper as someone who had lost their license to practice due to malpractice. As part of the settlement, author Y had agreed to refrain from providing services to patients. Author Y now resides on a different continent, and the study presented in the submission was apparently carried out in in this continent. There is no mention in the conflict of interest statement regarding the loss of license.

A commentary was reviewed by journal A and rejected. The paper was then submitted and accepted at journal B. Journal B published the commentary. After publication, a reviewer from journal A wrote to journal B with a complaint of plagiarism. Text from his/her review was used in the commentary published in journal B

A journal received an enquiry from a reader stating that they had found some discrepancies in the spectra published in the electronic supporting information for a published paper. They suggested that the discrepancies would be consistent with the spectra being manually ‘cleaned’. If this were true, the characterisation and purity of the compounds reported in the paper would be called into question.

The editor received an allegation of image falsification from a whistleblower relating to two papers published more than ten years previously (under the previous editor and publisher). A senior editor reviewed the allegations according to COPE guidelines, and decided there was evidence of image duplication. The allegations were then put to the author who was unable to supply the original data and asked for the opportunity to repeat the experiments.

A reader, Dr A, wrote to the editors explaining a number of concerns she had with some of the figures in a paper published in the journal. The editors sought the advice of an associate editor with more expertise in the subspecialty of the paper. The associate editor concurred with Dr A’s opinion of the paper and the authors were invited to respond.

A paper was accepted in 2012 but there was a lengthy disagreement between the four authors regarding the order of authorship. The authors were advised that the paper would not be published unless all authors could sign a written agreement on the order of authorship and copyright form.