2019

The presenters found an e-book where all of the 'chapters' comprised articles from different issues and volumes of their journal. These were used without the journal’s permission or any form of approval. The journal’s co-publisher neither gave permission nor was contacted. Also, no one contacted the authors of the articles involved for permission. 
 

Journal A received an original article (article B) with three coauthors which showed substantial similarities with a single-authored article accepted in the same journal a few months previously (article A). The author of article A was one of the three coauthors of article B.

A journal published an article discussing alleged partnerships between a well-known soft drinks brand and a number of health organisations in one particular country. The article was fully peer-reviewed prior to acceptance and now sits online in the journal’s advance access section of the website. A month after it appeared online, the Editor-in-Chief started to receive several written calls for the paper to be retracted.

An article was submitted to Journal A for publication. According to the journal’s policy, the article was scanned using anti-plagiarism detection software, which gave a 17% similarity result. As the journal allows up to 20% similarity, the article was sent for peer review to two reviewers. One of the reviewers noted that the article had been published in a similar form in a conference proceedings.

A journal published an article about clinical recommendations for a condition that supposedly was the result of a consensus between two scientific societies of different medical specialties. The article underwent peer review and no problems were identified at that stage.

A single author submitted a paper to our journal. A similarity check revealed 48% similarity with another published paper. The published paper was by different authors—5 in total. The similarities between the papers were in the introduction, methods and discussion sections. The submitting author did not reference the published article.

We queried the corresponding author but have not received a response. 

In 2016, group A published manuscript X in our journal. In early 2017, group B submitted a comment critical of the published manuscript. Following peer review, in accordance with the journal’s then active policy, the comment was rejected from further consideration. The policy allowed for the author of the original article to be one of the peer reviewers of the comment.

A handling editor noticed a reviewer report where the reviewer instructed the author to cite multiple publications by the same reviewer in their manuscript. The handling editor noted a similar instance involving this reviewer from the past and requested the editorial office to look into his reviewing history.

We received an email from a whistleblower notifying us about possible plagiarism in two chapters published by us, both authored by the same two authors. The whistleblower accused the authors of substantial plagiarism.