2018

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.

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.

Journal Y received an original article for review, which was subsequently published online. 
 

Journal A accepted a commentary for publication. In the acceptance letter and communications with the authors, the editor requested the authors remove portions of their commentary that contained derogatory comments about individuals and the journal that were deemed inappropriate for discourse in a scholarly publication. The authors agreed to do so.

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 additional references, both of which are from the same journal.