2020

A publisher is responding to allegations about a particular group of authors. The complainants have accused this group of authors of wide scale research fabrication and misconduct, relating to a large number of their papers across many different journals (published by a variety of publishers).

The case has been with two publishers for more than a year. Journal A at publisher A published article A by author A, affiliated to institution A and institution B (in another country), and author B affiliated to institution B. Journal B at publisher B then published article B, by the same authors and affiliations. The two articles are on closely related research.

A publisher was alerted to possible issues with band duplication in an article (more than 10 years old) by a reader. The corresponding author was contacted to resolve the issue. The author was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the bands, and because of the age of the article, the original data were no longer available. The institution was asked to investigate; a summary of the case was provided and the similarities in the bands using an open source tool were highlighted. 

A journal operated double blind peer-review, so the reviewers do not know the identity of the authors, and vice versa. However, the anonymity of the authors is not guaranteed, as the reviewers may discover the identity of the authors (because of the area of research, references, writing style, etc). But rarely can the authors identify the reviewers.

The journal received a request from a reviewer to share a post on twitter, which may disclose the reviewer’s identity to the authors.

An author has contacted the journal enquiring about the need for institutional review board approval for a survey. The survey is not derived from a specific institution but rather out of the personal interest of the author(s) who are targeting a point of wide scientific interest. The authors have a broad reach in social media. 

We are a scholarly publishing platform. We have recently encountered a unique case in which an author wishes to be removed from a published article due to allegations that have been made in the public domain about the lead and corresponding author.
 

An article was published in a journal. Seven months later an email was received from an author declaring that he was invited by the lead author of the article to help with statistical analysis and had made significant contributions to the paper. To his surprise, he realised that the article was published and he was not listed as a coauthor.
 

Journal A published two studies from a group of authors from country X. The editor of journal A was contacted by journal B who had some concerns as they rejected a paper from the same group. The author did not respond well to the decision and repeatedly sent harassing emails to the editorial office of journal B. Journal B investigated the manuscript closely and found that:  

Journal X has recently received two manuscripts, which were previously published at a conference, with DOIs and publisher information. They contacted the authors with our concerns.

Author A's manuscript was taken verbatim from their conference paper, yet they insisted that they own the copyright of the conference paper. They claim that they are free to re-submit the paper to Journal X, but failed to give any evidence. 

A handling editor rejected a paper without review, after consulting with a senior editor. The corresponding author sent an appeal about 2 weeks later where he requested that the paper be given a second chance and be sent for peer review. He added that, in case of a new decision to reject without review, the editor should provide a detailed response to a number of questions and comments raised in the appeal letter.