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.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• What shall we do given this circumstance?
• Should we withdraw/reject the article and embargo the author.
• Should we contact the author’s institute without receiving any clarifications from the author?
• How long should we wait for a response from the author before reporting to the institute?
Advice:
The Forum would advise contacting the author one more time, and specifically stating that if no response is received within a given time frame, then the editor will contact the author’s institution and ask them to investigate. The editor should be very clear about the date by which a response is expected. That may provide the motivation for the author to respond.
The Forum asked what is the percentage similarity that should raise concerns? This varies widely—by discipline, even by editors within the same discipline. The similarity index needs to be reviewed carefully, and experienced editors will look at all aspects of the article and the sources when deciding if there is significant overlap. Is there a minimum cut-off score below which there is no need to check for plagiarism? One study found a cut-off value of 15% to be useful (https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s410...).
If the editor believes that there was no malicious intent on the part of the authors, an educational approach may be appropriate—for example, if the authors are junior researchers. The editors could explain what is expected of authors in terms of attribution of text, and best practice in this area. However, the editor may not be in a position to know the intent of the authors and this would be better addressed by the institution.
The journal cannot proceed moving this article forward until some of these questions are answered. COPE would never advise banning authors because of the legal implications.
A journal received an allegation of scientific misconduct from an anonymous individual stating they were from the group that had written the paper (Institution-1, there are two institutions involved in this research). The email stated that the scientific bases of the article were unreliable. The paper was currently with the authors who were revising the paper after the first round of review, and additional experiments were required.
The editors followed-up with the whistleblower requesting more information and their identity. The whistleblower emailed back, concealing their identity, but provided additional information, highlighting a specific component of the research as unreliable.
Institution-2 (the one that was not claimed by the whistleblower) was informed of the whistleblower. Institution-2 responded by saying that the authors believed there was an initial problem with the data used, but these had been updated and were not fabricated. Institution-2, however, was not the institution that carried out the experiments in question.
The editors made the decision to obtain more information. On resubmission of the paper, the three original reviewers looked at the manuscript but were not told about the whistleblower. All three were satisfied with the changes made to the paper and approved publication. A fourth reviewer was asked to look at the paper and told about the anonymous whistleblower. This reviewer found no clear evidence of fraud, but he could not assess the experiments in question. This reviewer did, however, raise new concerns about technical deficiencies in the work. Aside from fraud, these new issues made it unsuitable for publication in the journal.
The editors requested outside assessment from researchers with knowledge of the work to redo the informatics analyses to see if the raw data (included with the paper) gave the same results as the processed data. Again, there was no clear evidence of fraud, but there was difficulty in complete reproducibility due to poor methods descriptions and lack of access to all of the data.
At this time the whistleblower sent an email recanting his/her original statement and saying they have assessed the work and the authors have made the appropriate changes to fix everything. This was an odd email as there had been no change in the manuscript since the resubmission.
The editors ultimately decided to reject the paper based on remaining concerns of misconduct and the heavy criticism of the fourth reviewer.
The authors from Institution-1 requested a meeting with the editors. At this meeting the authors: expressly denied misconduct; showed the editors pages of data from the experiments of concern; and provided the editor with a copy of an email from an anonymous whistleblower that the leader of the group had received 2 days before the journal editor had received their anonymous email. This anonymous individual claimed to be from Institution-1, and stated that one of the authors (from Institution-1) had visited their institution and removed data.
An additional oddity is that the email addresses from the whistleblower to the editor and to the authors were created to indicate they came from the institutions claimed. Investigation of the email origins showed that the two anonymous whistleblower emails came from the same individual, not two different individuals as claimed.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
• How should editors act on a tip from an anonymous whistleblower, where there is uncertainty about the unknown person's goals and that, should institutions take punitive action without investigation of the whistleblower’s intent, careers could be heavily impacted.
• If the institutions, when informed, decide to take no action, do the editors have a responsibility to investigate to get a better sense of whether they should further push the institution given the authors can simply submit a paper elsewhere where those editors will not know about the potential for misconduct.
• Due to the importance for the career of individuals on this paper, can the editors aid the authors submitting elsewhere, given that the whistleblower lied, but there is no way to disprove fraud. Or should the editors provide the information about the whistleblower to the institution.
Advice:
This was a very complicated situation and the editors have no clear means to further investigate beyond what they have done already. The editors had gone far beyond what is normally assumed to be the role of the journal in such cases. The advice from the Forum was for the journal to contact the head of the institutions and the ethics board. The editor can use the Office for Research Integrity (ORI) website to check affiliations if the institutions are outside the US (there are some listings of cooperating national ethics approval boards). The Forum advised contacting the authors first before informing the institution. The institutions should also be informed of the whistleblower’s behaviour and the apparent falsification of email addresses to create the appearance of two whistleblowers.
Suggestions for another journal and assistance with revision might be appropriate in some cases. Because of the issues raised by review #4, the article was not suitable for this journal but there are other journals in the field that might accept a revised article. The suggestions for revision already provided to the authors will help them modify the article and correct any errors.
Follow up:
The editor informed the authors of the overall discussions at the COPE Forum, saying that they had done all they could based on COPE guidelines in terms of trying to assess the veracity of the claims (and detailed the standard COPE guidelines). The editor told the authors that he felt that at this point, further investigation into the situation had to move to their institution if they wanted to pursue that avenue and gain some resolution. Because of the serious nature of this issue, the journal told the authors that they had an additional referee look at the work, one who was very familiar with the journal. He/she raised additional concerns about the work from the standpoint of suitability to the journal, and hence the decision was made that the work was not suited to the journal.
This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to emails from whistle blowers. We encourage journal editors and publishers to comment (whether or not they are COPE members), and also welcome comments from researchers/authors and academic institutions. Please send us comments. http://publicationethics.org/contact-us
COPE's guidelines, as a flowchart, on how to respond to whistleblowers when concerns are raised about a published article on a social media site.
How should you respond when a published article is criticised on social media or a post-publication peer review site(s)? The criticism could include anonymous or not anonymous concerns about scientific soundness or allegations of plagiarism, figure manipulation or other forms of misconduct.
Authors Tim Albert, trainer in medical writing; Elizabeth Wager, freelance writer and trainer, on behalf of COPE Council Version 1 November 2015 How to cite this
COPE Council.Responding to Whistleblowers - concerns raised via social media. Version 1. 2015https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.14
Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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).
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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
How should you respond when concerns are raised by a whistleblower about a published article directly via email to the editor or publisher? This could include anonymous or not anonymous concerns about scientific soundness or allegations of plagiarism, figure manipulation or other forms of misconduct.
Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
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
Full page history
Background
On occasion a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. Complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these complaints turn out to be well founded, investigations should proceed as warranted. However, there are also cases where a complainant makes repeated allegations against a journal, editor, or author that turn out to be baseless. Examples of multiple complaints include:
We received a claim that several authors were removed from an article published in one of our journals before the article was submitted. None of those said to have been removed were acknowledged.
The claimant requested retraction. They said the article was previously submitted to other journals, listing them as an author. They provided what they said was an earlier version of the article submitted to another publisher, which listed those additional authors, including themselves. The articles were the same, with small differences in language. They provided what they said were rejection letters from other journals, including the additional authors.
The claimant was reluctant to be named and expressed concern about repercussions; we explained the claim could not otherwise be investigated by the institution. They agreed we could contact the authors and institution. We did, and the claimant stated the authors threatened them. The submitting author said the claimant should not have been an author and the claimant agreed to this, and provided signed statements from the other removed authors agreeing to being removed. We contacted these removed authors and they each confirmed they participated in the work, but did not want to be listed as authors.
The submitting author did not show us the agreement from the claimant to not be an author. The claimant informed us that one of these other people said they were presented with a pre-written statement to sign in English, which is not their native language.
We asked the institution to investigate. After several months, the institutional committee informed us of their decision: the claimant provided an email statement agreeing not to be listed as an author; our published author list was correct; the claimant would be penalised professionally for harming the institution’s reputation.
We asked to see a copy of the claimant’s email in which they agreed not to be an author, but this was not provided despite repeated requests. The institutional contact told us they had left their post and directed us to contact the article’s senior author. The claimant informed us this earlier statement applied to a different article. The claimant said we should have investigated this claim ourselves and by not doing so we exposed them to negative consequences; they suggested they might take legal action against us. We referred them to the COPE guidelines, 'Request for addition of extra author after publication'. They said they would consider legal action against the institution.
We let the institution know, through another contact, that an option for contributors who do not meet criteria for authorship is to be acknowledged and we confirmed the investigation is confidential so will not have affected their reputation; we did not receive a reply.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum • Could the claim involving authorship have been made anonymously? • Could we have investigated further before involving the authors and/or institution? • Should COPE rules be revised when dealing with uncooperative or potentially biased institutional review committees? • Is there anything further we can or should do now?
Advice:
The Forum asked if there is a national body or research integrity office that the journal could contact and ask them to investigate?
The Forum agreed that it is almost impossible to deal with an authorship dispute without revealing the names of those involved, and that there was little else the journal could have done under these circumstances. The Forum did not believe the journal could have investigated any more.
The journal could use this as an opportunity to say to the institution that they expect all institutions to cooperate and to have good processes in place for such issues, and remind them that they are ultimately publicly responsible for decisions on authorship.
One suggestion was that the journal could consider issuing an expression of concern, which may allow the author to have some form of acknowledgement and it also may induce the institution to follow-up.
Another suggestion was for the editor to write an editorial on this issue.
Dealing with uncooperative or potentially biased institutional review committees is an issue COPE could explore further with institutions.
Follow up:
The journal attempted to contact oversight bodies, but have not received a response. The claimant says they have taken legal action against the authors. The journal separately received a legal claim regarding the contents of the article, but could not verify the contact details of that claimant and they did not respond to our queries.
We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student.
Our journal is a fully English language publication and the accusing third party and author A are from a non-English speaking country, as is the student (assumedly). The accusing third party forwarded the student's research paper to the editor which is entirely written in another language but contained an English abstract.
The Editor contacted author A and the response received included an attached confirmation letter supposedly from his/her student stating that they had no involvement in the published work by author A and that their research is completely separate to the published paper by author A.
We have several concerns: 1. It is difficult for the editor to examine the abstract the third party sent to us against the published article by author A. 2. We do not know if the response letter emailed from author A, confirming no involvement in author A's paper, is genuinely from the student. 3. The accuser's identity or relation to the matter is unknown to us. Ideally the editor needs to contact the student directly but we need bona fide contact details of the student and we are not sure we would get it from the accuser or the accused author A. Google is also of little help as there are so many people with the name.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum • How should we go about contacting the student? • What should be our next steps?
Advice:
COPE’s advice in these types of cases would be to contact the student directly. Contacting the institution in confidence through the Office of Graduate Studies would be the most normal route but some universities in some countries might not respect the confidentiality of the student. The Forum acknowledged how frustrating it must be for the journal, and that there is probably little else that can be done.
The journal could ask the third party for the contact details of the student. The only other suggestion was to see if there is a licensing board in the country that could be contacted. Any licensed professional is usually governed by a licensing board.
Follow up:
The editor contacted the accuser asking for the student’s details but no response has yet been received.
Follow-up (January 2017): The journal considers the case closed.