El autor principal de un artículo rechazado para su publicación identificó y nombró de forma pública a uno de los cuatro revisores durante una entrevista con los medios de comunicación tras publicar el artículo en otra revista. El autor dio a entender en la entrevista y más tarde en Twitter que el artículo había sido rechazado por la revisión de este revisor y afirmó que el revisor no había revelado conflictos de interés relevantes.
Un autor potencial se puso en contacto con la oficina editorial de una revista para solicitar que ciertos expertos que participaron en la elaboración de guías sobre un tema particular no participasen en la revisión de su artículo. El autor nombró específicamente a ciertos de estos expertos, entre los que se incluía a miembros del consejo editorial de la revista.
This month’s topic is “journal management” and on first blush, it isn’t obvious how the concept of “ethics” applies to this topic. I thought of things like selection and implementation of a manuscript manager, paying bills, identifying reviewers, etc. But when I got past my concrete thinking it’s clear journals must be managed based on fundamental ethical principles. These include: Autonomy, Justice, beneficence, non-malfeasance.
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Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests — COIs) are ubiquitous. One definition is as follows:
“A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.”
Written by COPE Council Version 1 January 2016 How to cite this
COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document: Handling competing interests. July 2016. https://doi.org/10.24318/ElTeSLhp
Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they
endorse you or your use of the work).
Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website: publicationethics.org
The first author of a paper rejected by our journal publicly identified one of the four peer reviewers for the paper by name. She did this during a media interview conducted after the paper was published by another journal. The first author implied in that interview and subsequently on Twitter that the paper was rejected because of that person's review and also claimed the reviewer did not reveal relevant COIs.
This complaint received a great deal of attention because the rejected paper had a direct bearing on a very bitter medical/political matter, and its results were felt to bolster the case for one faction. The authors had not lodged a formal complaint with our journal about this matter. We usually do not comment on papers that we do not publish, so when contacted by the press about this accusation our initial response was to "neither confirm nor deny" that we had considered the paper. It soon became clear, however, that the reviewer was the subject of much unpleasant comment on social media and other vindictive behaviour. A colleague of the reviewer, for example, tweeted that he was "ashamed" to be a professor in the same institution as the reviewer. The reviewer also received two freedom of information requests asking for any correspondence with the journal and anybody else concerning the rejected paper.
What the journal did:
1. We immediately contacted the authors to let them know we were disappointed in their behaviour. The authors acknowledged their mistake and had already contacted the reviewer to apologise. The reviewer accepted the apology but expressed the hope that we would make his review public, saying "I am continuing to get emails from people who are assuming that I wrote negative reviews for the paper and raising questions about conflict of interest. I believe my reviews to have been supportive of publication and not to comment on whether the journal should accept or not. So from my point of view it would be helpful if you could publish my reviews regardless of whether the other reviewers agree to this..."
2. The other reviewers and the authors agreed that we could make this matter public, so we broke with precedent and published a blog. We received mostly positive comments on Twitter and in the comments section for the blog.
3. We have also amended our instructions for authors on the journal website to say "For rejected research papers, we expect that authors will keep the identity and comments of peer reviewers confidential. They may, however, share the peer review comments (although not peer reviewer names) in confidence with other journals. Authors should contact the editor who handled their paper if they have any complaints about the peer review process or the behaviour of the peer reviewers."
4. We have also amended our rejection letters to say "Although the journal has an open peer review process, in which authors know who the peer reviewers were, we expect that you will keep the identity and comments of the peer reviewers for this paper confidential. You may, however, share the peer review comments in confidence (although not the names of the peer reviewers) with other journals to which you submit the paper. If you have any complaints about the peer review process or the conduct of the peer reviewers, please contact the editor who handled your paper. Please do not contact the peer reviewers directly."
5. We continue to follow-up periodically with the reviewer to make sure he is not suffering any additional ill effects from this incident.
6. We are submitting this case to COPE and will also be referring it to the journal's internal ethics committee. The matter now seems to have died down, but it raises many questions.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• Should the journal have handled this differently?
• Should the journal formally notify the first author's institution about her behaviour?
• Are the additional instructions to authors on our website and in rejection letters adequate? Should we do anything else to prevent this from happening again?
• Should peer reviewers who do research in the same field as authors of a paper declare this as a COI? If so, when? Almost all reviewers are chosen because they have expertise in the same field, and commonly their conclusions have differed in some respects from those of the authors. At present very few reviewers list this among their COIs.
Advice:
The Forum agreed that the journal did a good job here, and has taken reasonable steps to change their process and avoid a similar situation in future
The Forum discussed whether the author was under pressure by a media interview and gave a comment afterwards for which they later apologised, or was it deliberate on the part of the author as the paper was published in another journal and this was an “attack” on the reviewer for the journal that rejected the paper. The Forum was ambivalent on whether the first author's institution should be contacted. It is possible that the institution is already aware of the case (because of the media coverage) but the institution could be contacted in neutral terms although it is unlikely that the journal could expect much action from them.
Regarding conflicts of interest, being in the same field is not in itself a conflict of interest—in fact it is usually a reason to pick a reviewer. Because experts in the same field have interests that are similar, they may unfairly be perceived to have a conflict of interest. However, sometimes reviewers do have conflicts of interest so it may be helpful to include instructions with some clarifying exemplars to help reviewers to identify conflicts of interest. For example, if a researcher has built a career on a particular view and are ‘famous’ for holding that view, that could be a conflict of interest. The advice was to ensure that the journal’s guidelines to reviewers regarding conflicts of interest are up to date. The COPE discussion document may be helpful in this regard (http://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/Discussion_document__on_handling_competing_interests.pdf)
A prospective author contacted the editorial office of a medical journal to request that an intended submission was not reviewed or consulted on by experts involved in a number of published guidelines on the topic of the paper. The author named some of these experts, which included members of the journal’s editorial board (including editor A).
The author justified this request by explaining that his paper disagrees with the published guidelines, and therefore he believed that the experts who contributed to the guidelines would “likely to be very negative and possibly biased”. The author stated that these experts, including some members of the editorial board, may have a conflict of interest. The author stated that his request is permitted by COPE.
The author was asked by the editorial office to submit his paper with the letter that detailed his request. The author did submit the paper with an abridged letter, as he believed that the original letter was not appropriate to submit with the paper. The abridged letter makes the same request, but does not specifically name the experts.
The journal’s policy is for all reviewers and editorial board members to declare any conflicts of interest when commenting on a paper, so that their comments can be taken in the context of their conflict. If reviewers or editors do not feel they can be impartial, then they would be asked not to contribute to the editorial process for the paper.
To provide further context, the author has submitted three papers to the journal previously, which have been rejected. The most recent submission was unsuccessfully appealed. The author’s letter to the editorial office refers to the papers previously rejected by the journal and outlines where they have been accepted for publication and the positive feedback the author has received from outside parties. The author points out that this feedback is “in stark contrast to the very critical comments” from the journal’s editorial board. The author has submitted letters to the journal, which have been published. One of these letters was in response to a paper published by the journal and authored by editor A. After submission of the paper the author emailed the editorial office with the comments: “I am sure that [the journal] will make sure that this manuscript is treated judiciously and justly. I humbly request that [the journal] should make sure that any criticism by editors and reviewers is specific, clearly explained and justifiable. However, if significant errors remain in this regard and if as a result an important debate and patient safety takes a backseat then I will probably need to make a formal complaint to [the journal] against the paper by [editor A] in the interest of patient safety. It is my duty to express my concern that such a complaint could possibly potentially have significant repercussions for the author [editor A].’
In light of these comments the journal is keen to ensure that the author has no grounds for complaint against the journal.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• Can an author request for certain experts not to be involved in reviewing their paper?
• By not involving experts that could be particularly negative, is the journal then giving the paper an unfair advantage?
Advice:
This case provoked a lot of discussion. The Forum had concerns that the researcher is being overly aggressive, and is behaving in a threatening way and holding the journal to ransom, possibly related to his past history with the journal. The advice was for the journal to take a tough stance and stand by its policies and procedures.
The answer to the question “can an author request for certain experts not to be involved in reviewing their paper?” is yes—the author is entitled to make this request, but the editor does not have to feel bound to exclude specific reviewers. Otherwise there is potential manipulation of the peer review system by the author. The author should give reasons for his requests. Some noted that it depends on how many experts the author asks not to be involved in reviewing the paper. Some journals put a limit on the number of reviewers that can be recommended/request not to review. If the author requests a lot of reviewers to be excluded, then this could raise concerns.
Many journals allow authors to specify "non-preferred" individuals at submission, but no guarantee is given that the editor will exclude those individuals, especially if they are considered the expert in the field. If an editor does contact non-preferred reviewers, other reviewers are also included. A non-preferred individual should not handle a paper as editor.
The Forum noted that these types of situations can end badly if the author has certain expectations. Hence a suggestion was to inform the author that the journal will do their best to accommodate his requests, the journal will conduct an unbiased and professional peer review process which may include some of the editorial board members if they have expertise in this field, and the editors will have the final decision. If the author is not happy with these conditions, then he should be invited to consider withdrawing his paper and submitting it to another journal.
Some cautioned that the author should be given the benefit of the doubt given that academic rivalries and feuds are not uncommon. If the author's study is flawed, other independent experts should be able to point out the flaws. Also, there are occasions when a potential reviewer has made a public statement prejudicial to the content or has a conflict of interest known to the author. If a reviewer is highly visible or is known to have a stance on a particular controversial topic, it is reasonable for an author not to want to have his paper reviewed by this person if the paper takes a contrary view or does not support this point of view, but it is also up to the editor to use his discretion. This can also be difficult in very small fields.
Another view was to ask author if the author agrees to formal open peer review—the reviewers are named, and perhaps the reviews are even uploaded as supplementary files if the paper is published. But others argued that you should not change journal processes for one paper. Also, there is a danger that this may provoke the author further if the reviewers he suggested are involved in the review of his paper. Also, editors have a duty to protect their reviewers.
Follow up:
The Editors decided to comply with the author’s request. The manuscript was rejected, based on two peer-review reports and opinions from 11 editors. The author was told that the journal had complied with the request, and that advice had been sought from COPE. The author subsequently appealed the decision; this was not upheld.
In light of this, the editorial board were asked to create a policy for handling requests to exclude individuals from the journal’s editorial process. The following has been added to the journal’s editorial policy: “We reserve the right to send manuscripts to the reviewers of our choice”. The editor considers the case closed.
I am seeking advice on a confidential ‘letter of concern’ from an author (X) of a manuscript submitted before I was appointed editor of the journal but rejected by me on the advice of the associate editor.
Author X is concerned with similarities or parallels between his manuscript, rejected in 2008, and a recently published article. I have looked over our file and contacted the associate editor who handled the manuscript. One of the authors of the published article, author Y, was in fact a reviewer of the manuscript by author X and recommended rejection, as did two other reviewers. In the opinion of the associate editor, there are clear parallels between the article by author Y and the manuscript by author X, but these seem to be the result of common research interests rather than appropriation of ideas or data.
Author Y has published previously on this subject. Both authors X and Y are well established scientists, although from somewhat different disciplines. At this point, it is my view that author Y should have declared a conflict of interest in the review of the manuscript but has not appropriated ideas or data. Unfortunately, our system at the time of this review did not include explicit guidelines on conflicts of interest. I can also imagine that the reviewer would have assumed that his overlapping interests were obvious from his previous publications.
My options seem to be the following: (1) Reply to author X, acknowledging the parallels but communicating the view of the associate editor that there has not been appropriation of ideas or data. (To acknowledge the apparent undeclared conflict of interest would seem to violate reviewer Y’s anonymity.).
(2) As above, but ask author X if he wishes to make a more formal complaint (waiving his own confidentiality), in which case we would need more specific details about the suspected appropriation of ideas or data.
(3) Write first to reviewer Y and request a response to the ‘letter of concern’. However, I do not think this is appropriate, given that author X indicated his communication was confidential.
I have consulted the COPE flowchart but find that the issue of a conflict of interest is not well covered.
Advice:
The Forum agreed that this was a case of reviewer misconduct and the editor should follow the flowchart on ‘What to do if you suspect reviewer misconduct’. The editor should contact author X and ask him to provide as much evidence as possible and then the editor can assess the situation. The Forum agreed that the editor’s best course of action was (2) above. If the case cannot be resolved, the editor might consider contacting the author’s institution.
A separate issue is that author Y should have declared a conflict of interest in the review of the manuscript and the Forum agreed that the editor could contact author Y informing him of this.