2019

Questions were raised regarding the validity of data in two published papers (from the same author). The journal therefore followed the initial steps as listed in the COPE flowchart ‘What to do if you suspect fabricated data’ and contacted the author as appropriate. 

Our journal received a manuscript which was a report of an evaluation and enhancement of an online clinical decision support system (CDS) for a specific population at risk of a disease. The online CDS had been developed by a national agency with a mission to support health promotion and disease prevention activities. Evaluation of the CDS was supported through contracts and sub-contracts.

An original paper was submitted to our journal. After peer review, the authors were requested to revise the paper, and the revision was submitted back to the journal. Our manuscript editor accepted the paper. 

The paper was scheduled for publication 3 months later after copyediting was completed. We informed the corresponding author about acceptance of the paper and sent them the typeset article for proof reading.

Journal A is dedicated to communication about practical treatments related directly to patient and personal experiences. These ongoing discussions have been part of this specific medical profession for the past 50 years and journal A is a platform for these discussions.

A journal usually publishes one student essay each issue. In a recent issue it published a student essay in support of a controversial but lucrative set of interventions. The paper declared no conflicts of interests and only listed two names in the acknowledgements section without describing their role in the manuscript.
 

The publisher of a journal has found a spelling mistake in a published manuscript (an abbreviation was explained incorrectly in the original published manuscript). Having in mind COPE's guidelines, "The term erratum usually refers to a production error, caused by the journal. The term corrigendum (or correction) usually refers to an author error", is a corrigendum the proper way to correct this mistake as the spelling mistake was not a production error? 

A journal accepted a paper but after receiving the decision letter, the corresponding author asked if one of the coauthors could be removed from the authorship list. This coauthor is now a prominent politician and felt that their new role would conflict with being an author on the paper. 
 

A journal received a manuscript on risk factors for a disease, which had no ethics committee approval or dispensation. The clinical data were collected from the electronic and physical histories of the patients during hospitalization. The authors stated that the study was not submitted to an ethics review board because these data are "secondary." In some countries, this type of research will require an ethics committee approval as well as specific approval by the hospital director.

An article was submitted to our journal (journal A) in March. According to the journal’s working policy, the article was initially reviewed inhouse and comments were sent to the author. The authors replied to the comments but did not agree to the suggestion to convert the article to a short report. A rather impolite letter was sent by the author criticising the policies of the journal.

A manuscript was published in our journal in 2015, and at the time of publishing (as now), the author was a faculty member of a university. The author's affiliation was not declared in the article, just the author's qualifications. Now the author wishes us to correct the paper and list her affiliation in the article.

Question(s) for the COPE Forum