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2018

Case

Victim of article theft wants correction to list their name, not retraction

18-17

Author A contacted us claiming that an article published in the journal recently by author B was stolen from an article author A had earlier submitted to two different publishers, publisher A in 2016 and publisher B in 2017. Author A provided the PDFs of the manuscripts they had submitted to those other publishers. The version submitted to us 2018 by author B was very similar to that submitted to publisher B.

Case

Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript

18-16

An author submitted two manuscripts to our journal and the data were clearly fabricated, which was confirmed when we examined the original patient data files. The lead author admitted that they had only recruited a few patients and fabricated all of the remaining data and said that the co-authors had done this without their knowledge.

Case

Peer reviewer contacted by author

18-15

In a single anonymous peer review process, a reviewer gave an author detailed suggestions about improvements in the statistical analysis. The author was asked to revise and resubmit the paper to address these and other reviewers' suggestions. The author, unaware of the reviewer’s identity, subsequently approached the reviewer as a respected colleague at a professional meeting to discuss the manuscript revision.

Case

Authorship conflict

18-14

Author A contacted our journal following publication of a manuscript claiming that he was the rightful author. We asked the author for proof and he said that he had all of the data concerning the patient because he received the operative specimen and made the diagnosis. Author A said he also collaborated in writing the article with author B and hence was surprised that neither his name nor his contribution appeared in the published article.

Case

Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing

18-13

Journal A accepted a manuscript with six authors in June 2017, which was published in January 2018. Several months later, the editors of journal A found that journal B had published paper B, which shared striking similarities to paper A. Journal B accepted paper B in November 2017 and published it in February 2018. The first author of paper B was different but the remaining four authors were from paper A.

Case

A pre-submission inquiry with a bribe

18-12

We recently received a pre-submission inquiry from an author, who identified as being fairly inexperienced with writing papers. At first glance it was a fairly standard pre-submission inquiry. The author mentioned the titles of two papers they allegedly had wrote and wondered whether we might be potentially interested in them.

Case

Increased number of casual submissions

18-11

We have experienced a sudden spurt in casual submissions of poor quality articles. We believe this is because authors wish to show that they have submitted articles which are under consideration at reputable journals.

Case

Controversy surrounding ethics approval

18-27

Journal A received a submission in which the authors conducted a field experiment. The authors noted that at the time of the experiment, ethics procedures were being developed at the authors' institution (institution A) and as a consequence of this, different departments within institution A had their own ethics procedures in place. The authors noted that they followed the procedures of their department, and that the department coordinator signed off on the study.

Case

Misrepresentation of journal decision on social media

18-25

An author submitted an invited paper to a journal and, after a double anonymous peer review, the decision on the paper was to request ‘major revision’. The author decided not to revise the paper, and therefore effectively withdrew the paper, based on disagreements with the reviewers. These disagreements were not discussed with the editor prior to withdrawing the paper.

Case

Author withdraws manuscript upon payment request

18-26

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 author confirms that they have has read the journal policies prior submitting the manuscript.

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