Case

Two manuscripts were submitted, reviewed by the journal, and rejected on the basis of negative reviews. The author took issue with one particularly negative review and appealed decision. Journal sought the advice of an editorial board member who reviewed the manuscripts and the reports and agreed that the correct editorial decision was made.

The author now wishes to see the manuscript files, including the names of the reviewers, as well as the names of those approached to review the manuscripts. Editorial office has refused because the journal operates a peer review policy whereby the authors are blinded to the reviewers’ identities. Editorial office feels that this would violate reviewers’ right to confidentiality and may expose the reviewers to hostile action on the part of the author.

COPE advice

As the peer review process is confidential and privileged between the editor and reviewer, it is up to the editor to decide how much information to disclose to the author. The editor should not comply with the author’s request to have the names of the reviewers. The author does not have a right to see his files although if the editor wishes to show them to him, then he may do so, provided the anonymity of those providing confidential advice is respected.

Source 

Case

Journal received an article. One of the referees discovered that a similar article had been published in a surgical journal 8 years ago. In that article, the authors presented data on the haemodynamics and intestinal blood flow in pigs. 

In the submitted article, they presented the same results, but only the first three time points (which had been included in the first article).  The data were exactly the same but the graphical presentation was different. The language was different; not copied from the first. The article also included three new authors.

The authors claim the second article is justified because they have some new, minor elements in the discussion. They were unable to admit and see that this is a clear case of double publication.

COPE advice

The data from the two papers are the same, the editor is well within his rights to reject the paper. The editor should warn the authors that this is not acceptable behaviour. Perhaps it should to suggested taking the matter further and contacting the authors’ institution, informing the Dean of the Faculty of the facts of the case. Regarding the question of the three new authors on the second paper and suggested that the author should be reminded of the criteria for authorship.

Follow up

The editor believed that this was a case of duplicate publication and he wrote to the dean of the faculty where the authors were working informing the dean about his concerns and requesting an investigation into the matter. The article was rejected. The Dean responded that he took this information very seriously and would follow-up.

The editor received a letter from one of the authors of the original publication. This author was furious with her colleagues. She obviously did not know that some of the original authors had attempted this double publication. From the journal’s point of view, the case is now closed.

Source

Case

A person named in the acknowledgements of a paper wrote to the editor indicating that they had been in part responsible for the analysis and interpretation of the data and should therefore be named as an author.

From editor's reading of the correspondence between authors it seems that the primary author may have used the ideas of the “complainant” to some extent in that the focus of the published paper does take one of the lines of interpretation that the complainant had suggested (a line of interpretation that was not given prominence in the very first outline manuscript from the author that was originally shared with the complainant and that I have seen). The analysis presented in the published paper was slightly but not substantially different from one of a number that the complainant had earlier performed. The author insists that neither of these points is correct and that the complainant had no role in the formation of the paper but rather had suggested a different focus for the analysis/paper that they did not go on to take up.

Editor has not been able to broker an agreement between the two parties and he is not able to square their two separate accounts of what has happened over time, including claims that some emails pasted into Word documents had been altered. As such, this leaves he unable to confidently either reject or accept the complaint.

COPE advice

This is essentially an author dispute and the editor cannot be expected to adjudicate in this matter. It is not the role of editors to resolve authorship disputes. The paper should not be retracted. But the editor could publish a notice of disputed authorship. The advice was to write to the complainant explaining that this is a matter between him and the author, and that the complainant should take the matter up with the author’s institution if he so wishes. In future, it might be useful for editors to confirm that persons named in the acknowledgements sections are aware of the fact and agree to inclusion.

Source 

Case

Two authors submitted a case report which was interesting but not written in the style of the journal. The editor therefore invited the authors to rewrite the case report, and resubmit it. They did so within a week. The case report was sent out for peer review, accepted and published.

The head of department of one of the authors then wrote to the journal, stating that the case report had previously been published in a non-English language journal, he was also an author on this publication. The authors had written a cover letter for each submission. Both cover letters stated that the case report had not been submitted to any other journal. They had been sent after the case report was published in the non-English language journal. The authors were contacted separately by email, and asked to explain the discrepancy. They were warned that if no satisfactory explanation was provided, the journal would have to retract the case report.

COPE advice

There were grounds for retraction of the paper. However, as the papers were in different languages, a “notice of duplicate publication” would be more appropriate. There are two issues here: (1) the author issue in relation to the names on the two papers and (2) the duplicate publication issue. There may also be copyright issues with the first journal. The advice was to write to the author’s institution, but not in this case to the head of department as he may be unable to remain unbiased. It was suggested to write to the Dean of the university and ask him to investigate.

Follow up

The authors wrote to say that the previous publication was not a scientific publication. They said that the magazine had no editor, no peer reviewers and no signed author agreement.  They sent us a photocopy of the instructions to authors, and highlighted a sentence saying “bear in mind that you are not writing a scientific publication”, from which they inferred that the magazine was not a scientific publication. 

However, the publication is quite a well known journal in their country of origin. It does have an editor. It is indexed on PUBMED, as indeed was their original publication. The statement about “not writing a scientific publication” appeared to refer to the section, rather than to the journal as a whole: moreover, it was in the section “guide to style”, and hence appeared to be intended to encourage lucid writing. Therefore, the article was withdrawn.

Source 

Case

One of the referees of journal has brought to our attention a potential case of plagiarism. The referee feels that the a manuscript submitted to journal, representing a retrospective study of a cohort of patients with a particular condition, plagiarises an article published in another journal. The authors are from an institute in a middle-eastern country.

The submitted paper contains numerous full paragraphs identical to those in the previous paper. Editorial also suspects that fraud may be involved. For example, the submitted paper reports data on 28 patients (72% male and 28% female); clinical sign 1 was present in 68%; sign 2 in 26%; sign 3 in 9% and one was asymptomatic. A particular investigation was diagnostic in 45%. In the first paper, 47 infants were studied. He percentages of the parameters detailed above were identical!

COPE advice

This is blatant plagiarism but also that fraud was likely in view of the identical percentages in the various subgroups of cases reported. It begs the question as to whether the research was actually performed.

It should to ask all of the authors for an explanation of why the text was identical to that of the other paper and why the percentages were identical. No allegation should be made and a deadline for an answer should be set. If no or no satisfactory answer is forthcoming, COPE recommends reporting the matter to the Vice Chancellor for Research at the authors’ university asking him to investigate. It was also suggested to COPE that the matter should be taken up with the Ministry of Health. If the university does not respond appropriately, they should be politely reminded at 3 month intervals, asking for the result of their investigation.

If the editor decides to publish an editorial on plagiarism/fraud etc, he should not identify the paper or authors concerned until the proper authorities have reached a conclusion.

Source 

Case

It has been drawn to attention that a paper published in a high-impact journal in the field of biological sciences (Journal A) draws very heavily on research published in the lower-impact factor journal for which we work (Journal B), as well as on work published in other journals. One of the authors of the paper in Journal B has contacted the editor of Journal A to register his/her concerns, as have several other high profile scientists in the field, including some whose work has also been appropriated. These scientists have each asked Journal A to investigate the peer review process for the paper in question. The author of the paper in Journal B has also asked the editor of Journal A if s/he might write a piece, to be published in Journal A, to ‘set the record straight’. This request was denied. Journal A, instead, suggested the author post a comment about the paper online on Journal A’s website, which would be of lower visibility than the article of concern itself.

COPE advice

The peer review process is notoriously bad at detecting fraud or most forms of misconduct and is not really the issue here. Moreover, it is not open to complainants to demand an editor review their journal’s peer review system. The focus should be more on defending the reputation of the authors. In the absence of an ombudsman for Journal A and the fact that it does not appear to have a printed letters section, most of the Forum agreed that the authors should accept Journal A’s offert to post a comment on their website. Once the issue is in the public domain, it can be discussed and debated.

In other side it was not sufficient for the authors to post a comment on the website because it is not citable, does not have a DOI and so would not be linked to the original article. The authors should complain to the editor and ask him or her again to publish their response; but it was pointed out that you cannot force an editor to publish.

COPE’s code of conduct states that editors have a duty to “encourage debate” and that “cogent criticisms of published work should be published unless Editors have convincing reasons why they cannot be”. Hence if the editor refuses to publish the complaint then the author could call into question their compliance with COPE’s Code of Conduct.

Source 

Case

Recently was published article A by author group X on journal's website ahead of print publication and subsequently received a formal complaint from author group Y alleging that the paper constitutes a breach of their intellectual property rights.

Group Y state that the described work is based on a jointly developed concept, initially resulting in a joint report published early. In their view, article A therefore contains their intellectual property, which is documented by frequent email exchanges, delivery of all relevant reagents and two visits by the senior author in group X to group Y's laboratory.

In article A, the authors state that they used commercial reagents, although group Y allege that their reagents were available to group X at this time. Group Y are seeking what they perceive to be correct acknowledgement for their contribution, and there was an ongoing legal dispute, which they are threatening to expand to include article A unless a suitable solution is found.

Editorial approached group Y to clarify if they thought they should be acknowledged on the paper, or even included as authors, but they did not answer, as they believe that group X should be asked to clarify their position.

Editorial approached group X for their response to these allegations. Group X maintain that their collaboration with group Y was their idea, as an obvious extension to their previous clinical publications. Group Y are chemists and had not published on any clinical topic prior to the collaboration with group X. Group X state that the collaboration came to an end in 2006 when the senior collaborator in group Y demanded that either s/he should be named as the last author or one of the junior members of group Y named as first author on any manuscript resulting from the collaboration. Group X considered this to be unreasonable and continued their studies using commercial reagents. 

The editors of the journal in question believe group X's response to be appropriate and complete, and find no grounds for taking group Y's complaint any further. The editors would like to proceed with print publication of article A.

COPE advice

The paper should be considered published. Although one suggestion was to let group Y have their say, perhaps in a letter to the editor, others cautioned against this approach in the light of unresolved legal issues. If legal proceedings are threatened, the editor should withdraw from the dispute and not investigate the matter further. The response from group X could be shared with group Y only after explicit consent from group X. The advice to go ahead with the print publication of the paper but the editor should not get involved in correspondence between the two groups and should seek legal advice. The Editor took COPE’s advice and no further action resulted. The editor considers the case now closed.

Source 

Case

Approximately 1 year after publication of an article, journal received a letter from one of the authors saying that they had not seen the reviews of the paper, the revisions of the paper or approved the final manuscript for publication. This was subsequently confirmed by the other authors who said that contact with the complainant had “broken down” and that the corresponding author had indicated that all named authors had given their approval for publication (then current journal practice). An additional relevant fact is that one of the authors was editor-in-chief of the journal at the time the paper was processed. The complainant did not wish the paper to be withdrawn but wanted the opportunity to publish a correction or addendum following sight of the reviewers’ comments. 

Journal understand that this matter has also been taken up by the employing institution of the co-authors (at which the complainant was previously an employee but has since left) but do not yet know of any outcome.

At the time, journal policy was for the corresponding author to sign an exclusive license form that stated “You hereby warrant that in the case of a multi-authored article you have obtained, in writing, authorisation to enter into this agreement on their behalf and that all co-authors have read and agreed the terms of this agreement”.

Following correspondence between the various parties the journal took the following actions:

– changed journal policy so that all authors sign an authorship declaration form, asserting that they meet the criteria for authorship;

– offer the complainant sight of the reviewers’ comments and the opportunity to publish an addendum or comment if they have points additional to those made in the paper;

– publish an apology by the authors for knowingly proceeding with publication without approval of the complainant.

In addition, the journal would like advice from COPE on whether our proposed response to this situation has been satisfactory.

COPE advice

Reassured that the paper had been dealt with blindly, and so there was no issue of misconduct on the part of the editor-in-chief. For online submissions, the editor should ensure that the email addresses of all authors are recorded. Some journalscopy in all authors when contacting the corresponding author. Other suggestions were to ask all of the authors to sign the copyright form. This is usually done by the publishers and can be another assurance that all authors have seen the final version of the paper. As the institute is already aware of the situation, there is no point in contacting them. The Forum agreed that publication of the apology would be a sufficient reproach for the editor-in-chief. 

Source

Case

About a month after our Journal A published a Paper X, the journal received emails from readers that Paper X was very similar to a Paper Y that had just been published by another Journal B. Some of these emails were sent to both journal offices. Paper X was submitted to Journal A a few days before Paper Y was submitted to Journal B and Paper X was published in Journal A about 3 weeks before Paper Y. The two paper superficially do not look similar and Paper X contains results that are not in Paper Y. However, the two papers also contain highly similar results and make similar key conclusions. Truth be told, all of the additional results presented in Paper X were added during revisions. The authors of Paper X knew that Paper Y had been accepted by Journal B by the time they submitted the first revision of Paper X to Journal A. 

The authors of these two papers overlap significantly and the two co-corresponding authors are the same. Journal contacted the authors. The authors pointed out the obvious differences between the two papers and a few minor differences that most readers would not detect, and insisted that the results reported in these two papers were obtained separately rather than the same results reported in two papers. In addition to those readers who sent emails to the editorial, the reviewers of Paper X and a few editorial board members of Journal A who read these two papers all agreed that the two papers were highly similar.

Journal contacted the office of Journal B and the Editor, and received a message from the managing editor of Journal B that the Editor of Journal B had asked for and received an explanation from the authors and was satisfied with the explanation.

COPE advice

Regardless of what the other journal does, the editor should publish a notice of concern. If it becomes clear that the data are the same, then the editor should consider publishing a notice of duplication. It is COPE’s policy not to encourage banning authors or to apply any other sanctions, partly because of the risk of litigation.

Solving the situation

This case was being investigated by the authors’ institution. A response was received from a Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Vice-President of the university. According to this letter, the investigation group consisted of one external expert (who coincidentally is a member of Journal A’s editorial board) and two university professors. Journal A is satisfied with this investigation conducted by the authors’ institution, and the communication regarding proper author/researcher conduct in publications from the authors’ institution to these authors. 

Source 

Case

An author anxious about a competing paper contacted journals A and B (and perhaps others) about possible fast-track consideration of his study. Journal A said it would be as fast as possible; journal B actually had the competing study under consideration so agreed to look at this study very fast. The author submitted to journal B, the article was refereed in less than a week, and journal B offered to publish the article if the author would cut it from full-length to short communication format. 

The author withdrew his paper formally from journal B and submitted it to journal A, where review took 3 weeks. During this 3 week period, the author’s anxiety about the competing paper increased and, fearing that journal A might not move fast enough on his paper, he re-contacted journal B, to know whether publication there (in short form) was still a possibility. The editors said it was, and there followed an exchange of emails in which journal B reiterated its acceptance in principle of the article, editors and author discussed copy editing and formatting requirements, and the author agreed to a deadline by which resubmission was required. 

Journal A then completed peer review and accepted the article in principle, followed by formal acceptance when the author submitted a final version a couple of days later. The author wrote to journal B after formal acceptance by journal A, to say that the article was accepted elsewhere. The editors of journal B knew from informal conversations with the author that he had considered journal A, and therefore contacted the editors of journal A about the possibility of duplicate submission.

COPE advice

The author had behaved badly and was in the wrong. All agreed that this was definitely a case of duplicate submission. The editor informed that an “official letter of censure” had been issued by journal B. The Forum suggested that the editors of journals A and B should write to the author’s institution jointly, informing them of the time wasting methods of the author and the general misuse of the editorial service.

Solving the situation

Journal B considered the matter closed with its formal letter of censure. Journal A wrote to the author and requested that he inform his institution and all coauthors of the outcome. As an aside, the work has now been published by a third journal, to which it was submitted on the day of withdrawal from Journal A.

Source

Case

One of the figures in an article under review was said by the authors to appear in a presentation given at a conference while the paper was still under review and from this identified the reviewer and accused this person of abusing their position.

When contacted by editorial office, the reviewer confirmed that s/he did use some data previously presented by this group of authors but in no way used this figure and did credit the authors. The reviewer had deleted the slides. The authors claim that the figure presented by the reviewer was identical to that in their paper under review and could not have been created using any of their previously presented data. 

The referee was removed from the list of reviewers for this article and told why, although the reviewer insists that no figure was used from this paper. The authors wanted us to remove the referee from editorial database completely and when editorial disagreed with this, withdrew their article. They have since requested to reinstate the article. The editor declined this request as the paper was unlikely to be recommended for publication in any case for scientific reasons.

COPE advice

This case regarding the conduct of a reviewer prompted mixed views from the committee. Some argued that the reviewer should be permanently removed from the journal’s list while others argued that such action was too harsh. Bearing in mind that there was no hard evidence, most agreed that the editor had acted correctly.

Source

Case

Journal A published an original article. After 3 years the editor received a complaint of plagiarism relating to a case report published by Journal B. The introduction of both articles had one identical paragraph and some paragraphs in the discussion were similar. 

The article published by Journal A did not reference Journal B, despite: (a) being easy to find on a simple literature search; (b) having similar paragraphs; and (c) being on the same rather unique topic. Journal A does not see this as an issue of scientific fraud but is concerned as to whether there is copyright infringement and about the publishing ethics involved.

COPE advice

COPE views plagiarism very seriously. Given that there seems to be only extracts involved, the suspicion must be that the author has "cut and pasted" material without attribution. The editor is advised to write to the author pointing out that to appropriate the words of others without making it clear that they are a quotation, represents intellectual theft. Moreover, it might also be breach of copyright. If the author is a young researcher or his or her first language is not English, then a gentle warning and advice on how to cite (ie, quotation marks and/or reference to the original article) should suffice. Of a senior or experienced researcher, some COPE members take the view that the author’s institution should be informed and that the second journal should publish a corrigendum.

Follow up

The editor contacted the author who plagiarised the article and the author responded. The author said that he was not personally aware of the previous article and of the plagiarism in the two paragraphs, but being the first author, he took full responsibility for it. He agreed that the previous article should have been referenced by them and asked to convey his apologies to the author of the previous article.

Source

Case

The editor received correspondence from a third party suggesting that a paper published in the journal by four co-authors contained suspect data. The suspicion was based on the observation that in three separate figures all error bars were identical. Indeed, the third party subjected 32 publications from the same group of authors to independent statistical appraisal and concluded that 21 (66%) of the papers were suspect, in comparison with none of a large control sample of papers from other institutions publishing in the same journals. Inspection of the figures did indeed indicate a consistency of error bars that were highly unlikely to have been generated by chance variation, suggesting that there is a prima facie evidence for concern about data fabrication.

COPE advice

Although multiple journals appear to be involved in this complicated case of suspected data fabrication, the general view was that the journal should pursue its own case in the first instance. Due process should be seen to be done and there is always the danger that waiting for a concerted effort from a number of journals could take several months or even years. Hence the advice was that the editor should write to the authors requesting the raw data, stating that it had been brought to his attention that the error bars were identical in three separate figures. This should be done without making an allegation or accusation of data fabrication but giving the authors a deadline of one month to respond. If no response is received, a second letter should be sent to the authors informing them that if no satisfactory response is received then the authors’ institutions will be contacted and informed of the situation.

Other advice offered was to have an independent statistical adviser review the paper, independently of the third party.

Follow up

The editor received a response from one of the authors in which the author stated that he had re-evaluated the results of all of the parameters and found an error in one of the figures. The raw data and covering note have been forwarded to the third party who raised the suspicion in the first instance and also to an independent statistician so that they can analyse the data and evaluate the author’s comments in the covering letter. 

Source 

Case

Author X contacted the editor of Journal A to enquire whether the journal would be interested in a review of a new concept in the treatment of a disease, written by author X and two co-authors. Author X said that his co-authors had suggested writing the paper for another journal but he had convinced them to submit the paper to Journal A. The editor invited submission and, after peer review, the paper was published. Soon after the review was published by Journal A, a member of the editorial team noticed a review on the same topic by the same three authors published in a recent issue of Journal B. Neither article cited the other.

Comparison of the two articles revealed that some sections were very similar despite rewording. The general structure and order in which the ideas were presented in the two articles was much the same. Both reviews contained three figures reproduced from another article. Two thirds of the references were the same. There were some differences between the articles: some concepts had been explained in more detail in the article in Journal B, whereas Journal A’s article contained sections on basic science that were only briefly mentioned in Journal B. The concluding sections of the two articles were quite different.

The editor of Journal A contacted the corresponding author (Author Y) to ask for an explanation. Author Y was very apologetic and explained that they had been asked initially by Journal B, a new journal that had yet to publish its first issue, to write a review on this topic. They wrote the review, which was an academic article focusing on the basic science underlying this new concept and its therapeutic implications. When the first issues of Journal B were published, the authors realised that the article they had written was not suited to the intended readership of Journal B, which was oriented to the more general practitioner. They then decided to submit the review they had written to Journal A and write a more clinically focused review for Journal B. Author Y said it never occurred to him to mention the article they were writing for Journal B because the two articles were intended for different audiences and the orientation was different. Each review did not cite the other, he said, as neither had been accepted when the other was submitted.

COPE advice

The committee raised the point that this form of duplicate publication occurs frequently, in that authors feel that they can submit a paper to two different journals as they believe that the audiences are different. However, this is not acceptable, even in the case of review articles, unless the original paper is cited and the editor is informed. In this case, the committee felt that there was a lack of openness on the part of the authors. 

The advice was to write to the authors saying that what they did was wrong, as outlined in the instructions to authors. Other advice was to ask the authors to insert a note in the review stating that a similar but not duplicate review has been published, and cite the other paper. It the authors are unwilling to do this, the journal should publish such a statement. Another suggestion was to raise the issue in an editorial.

Source

Case

Paper A appeared in a foreign language journal, together with an English abstract. Paper B was submitted to editorial, and one of our referees alerted to the similar content. 

Closer inspection, including retrieval of the original foreign language manuscript and review by a deputy editor with a working knowledge of that language, and inspection of the tables by the editor and another editor, indicated that the two papers contained largely identical data and had a similar content. The foreign language version included slightly more detail on the research setting, methods, and results compared with the English version, while in the English version there were some additional analyses and minor changes in the title and organisation of the content. Despite these differences, the text of the two versions was similar and the main messages and conclusions were the same.

On submission to editorial, paper B did not make reference to, acknowledge, or cite the previous foreign language publication. The covering letter to the journal stated: “Please note that neither the entire paper nor any part of its content has been published or accepted by another journal. The paper is not being submitted to any other journal”. When asked to supply the earlier paper, the authors included a covering note pointing to some differences and acknowledged “the possibility of an overlap between the foreign language paper and the submitted manuscript”.

COPE advice

The committee agreed that it was entirely acceptable to publish a paper in a foreign language journal and then in an English journal provided the first paper is cited in the second journal, and it is made clear to the editor at submission. Both journals should give consent as the first journal has copyright. Although in the case of this particular journal there was no explicit advice on this subject in the instructions to authors, it was felt that this advice is freely available and widely acknowledged. 

The committee felt that the authors had deliberately misled the editor. One piece of advice was to write a strongly worded letter to the authors saying that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Some members of the committee thought that stronger action was required to reflect the seriousness of the matter, and that the authors’ institutions should be informed. 

It was suggested that the instructions to authors of the journal should be updated to explicitly state that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. The could be further highlighted in an accompanying editorial.

Source 

Case

Journal A published a paper 1. After 2 years the Editor of Journal A was contacted by a reader, who expressed his doubts as to the integrity of one of the authors. The reader suggested that the author in question had been involved in the fraudulent publication of a paper 2 published in Journal B. The reader had noted that the article 2 published in Journal B was almost an exact copy of an article 3 published in Journal C.

The Editor of Journal A examined copies of the articles from Journals B and C and concluded that this appeared to be a case of plagiarism.

COPE advice

The committee questioned if there had been any attempt to contact the editor of journal B and make him/her aware of the situation. Write to the author and ask for an explanation and if that is not satisfactory contact the author’s institution. Also journal A should check the article 1 to make sure it is not plagiarised.

Follow up

The editorial followed COPE’s advice and have sent a letter to the author expressing concerns that the papers in question are very similar and asking for an explanation. Also written to the Editor-in-Chief of the journal B in which the paper 2 was published to alert him to the situation. 

Source

Case

A journal published an animal study on the use of drug X for the treatment of clinical condition A. The authors did not declare any competing interests. A few months after publication, a journalist contacted the editors to say that the corresponding author had several patents on drug X, was listed as an inventor of the drug, and that the public charity of which he is the director recently announced that they were seeking approval for clinical trials of drug X in condition B. He also said the corresponding author co-owned a commercial company with whom the charity does business. The authors were asked to clarify any competing interests, and were directed to the journal’s policy, which is posted online as part of the instructions for authors.

The corresponding author replied saying that the commercial company was a subsidiary of the charity and had no ownership rights to the drug. He did not specifically say whether there were any competing interests to declare. Instead, he wanted to know how this matter had come to light. During a telephone conversation he confirmed that the charity had applied for a patent for the use of the drug for the treatment of clinical condition A, but it was yet to be approved. He also said that no company had been licensed to develop/manufacture the drug for either condition. However, he also said that if the drug was ever licensed, the charity might choose to pass on some of the royalties to the inventors.

It was suggested that the following competing interest statement should be published: “Authors 1, 2 and 3 are employees of the not for profit institute, which has applied for a patent for the use of drug X in the treatment of clinical condition A. The institute is a public charity that currently holds patents for the use of drug X in other clinical conditions, with Author 1 listed as an inventor.”

COPE advice

In the interests of transparency the authors should have declared a conflict of interest. The holder of a patent should declare that they hold such a patent even if any profits made go elsewhere, because they stand to derive an intangible benefit from being associated with that patent. There is nothing wrong with having a conflict of interest, but it must be declared. This allows readers to decide for themselves the relevance of the conflict of interest to the paper’s conclusions. It is good practice for journals to ensure that they have a clear policy on conflict of interest. Some journals send the paper back to the original reviewers and ask them to comment on whether the conflict of interest would have changed their opinion on the paper. Retraction of a paper for an undeclared conflict of interest would only be considered in very serious cases where this seemed to undermine the validity of the data. The publication of a correction about the undeclared conflict of interest is usually the most appropriate course of action. The reference to the not-for-profit institution was a red herring as there was a potential for the authors to still receive both financial and non-financial benefits from the product. The editor should publish a correction stating the nature of the undeclared conflict of interest. The journal should also consider whether they need to state their conflict of interest policy more clearly.

Follow up

A new correction was drafted, which excluded the authors’ affiliation to a non-profit organisation. The editors contacted the corresponding author to let him know of the change, why it had been done, and to ask for his approval of the reworded correction.

The corresponding author said that he would not agree with a declaration that did not mention that his institution is a public charity. He also stated that he felt the guidelines for declaring competing interests posted in the instructions for authors were not explicit enough. The editors responded that the “non-profit” status of the institution was not relevant, potential competing interests might still exist, and that it should be declared.

The author refused to consent to a declaration that did not mention “non-profit” and wanted to contact COPE to discuss the matter in more detail. The author also threatened legal action if the editors proceeded to publish the correction without his consent.

He suggested a new draft for the text of the correction. To clarify the journal’s position, the editors decided to post the following comment on the correction, which the author also agreed. 

Source

Case

A paper was reviewed by two referees. The associate editor dealing with it recommended rejection as both reviews were critical of the methods, results, and reproducibility of the experiment. After the authors were informed, the editor-in-chief received an email from someone in the same laboratory, expressing relief that the manuscript had been rejected. The writer went on to say that s/he had misgivings because the effect of the biological mechanism described in the paper was less than 1%, and s/he was therefore strongly opposed to the submission of the manuscript. 

The lead author had responded to these misgivings by removing the writer’s name from the author list. The writer explained that s/he feared the study might damage the journal’s reputation if accepted, but at the same time felt that s/he could not confess his/her concerns.

COPE advice

The COPE guidelines specify a clear duty for an editor to actively pursue misconduct even if the article in question is not published. This adds to the already heavy workload of journal editors but they are in a privileged position as whistleblowers. The letter does not make clear whether the writer is alleging an academic dispute over interpretation of the data or if the interpretation had been dishonest. If the matter was a genuine scientific disagreement about interpretation then the author is entitled to submit the manuscript for publication. A person who has been involved in the work should also be involved in the writing process, both to ensure correct attribution and to determine accountability should a subsequent problem with the data arise. The journal should seek clarification from the letter writer as to the nature of the disagreement and then, if felt necessary, pursue the matter further with the author of the paper.

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Case

Editor A wrote to editor B, indicating that one of the reviewers of a paper submitted to Journal A contained material that had been submitted at about the same time to Journal B. Editor A requested a copy of the paper submitted to Journal B. Editor B responded, confirming that the paper in question had been submitted to Journal B (submission date two weeks earlier than the paper submitted to Journal A), but had been rejected eight weeks later after external peer review. Editor B sent a copy of the rejected paper to editor A. Editor A examined the two papers and confirmed that there was “some degree of overlap” between the two and also felt that there was a degree of “salami slicing.”

COPE advice

This was a case of an intelligent reviewer catching a dual submission serendipitously. Sending a copy of the manuscript under review to another editor might be considered a breach of confidentiality with the author, but in cases of suspected misconduct, such action was part of the peer review process. Public interest in preventing fraudulent publication overrides confidentiality with the author.

Sometimes authors write up different aspects of one research study and send them to different journals, so dome degree of overlap is inevitable, but as long as the authors openly declare what they have done, this is acceptable practice. They should cross reference or include a copy of the companion paper.

What would happen if an editor requests the author to provide the companion paper and the author refuses? The COPE guidelines on redundant publication state that at submission, authors should disclose details of related papers. In cases where a reviewer alerts an editor to the possibility of duplicate publication the duty to the author is to ask them to respond to the allegation and provide the other paper.

The two journal editors should write “joint letters” to the authors about the matter, pointing out why this is an important issue and requesting a response within a specified time limit.

Source 

Case

An identical paper was submitted simultaneously to two journals. Both editors had received a signed statement from the authors declaring that their paper had not been submitted elsewhere. Duplicate submission became evident only when the associate editor of one of the journals was sent the paper to review by the editor of the other journal. The author also cited two papers within this submission, of which he was a co-author, which a PUBMED search revealed, were duplicate publications of each other. 

The associate editor of one of the journals also suspected that another of the cited papers published in English was very similar to one published in German. Both journals withdrew the paper from the review process, pending an explanation from the author for the attempt to secure dual publication. The authors replied, apologising for the error, which had been due to “hurry and inattentiveness, ” adding: “that the predicament is entirely due to circumstances beyond our intention. ” They requested that the paper be withdrawn. 

An explanation for the previous episode of duplicate submission was not given, although they said that they had sent a detailed letter to the editors of both journals, stating that it had not been their intention to secure dual publication. Both editors agreed that the case could not be taken any further as the paper had now been withdrawn. It was suggested that the author’s head of department should be informed, but the head of department was one of the co-authors. The editor of one of the journals has decided to let matters lie and intends keeping a close eye on these authors in the future.

COPE advice

The dean or head of the institution should be informed. Although the author had offended on a previous occasion, he/she was continuing to attempt to secure dual publication. The editor had a duty to take the matter further. The editor must tell the other editor what he intends to do. He should recommend that the institution not only look at the identified case but also alert it to the possibility that there may be others. 

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Case

The newly appointed editor of Journal A noticed that an article he had just published in his journal bore remarkable similarities to an article published a couple of months earlier in Journal B. The authors work in a well established academic department. On detailed review, the articles were indeed very similar and came to an identical conclusion. In places, sentences had been rearranged and it was hard to escape the conclusion that this had been done deliberately. The article in Journal A seemed to be reporting the findings in a subset of subjects in the Journal B article. The editors wrote to the authors, who were the same for both articles, bar two additional names on the Journal A article, to ask for an explanation. They drew their attention to the COPE guidelines published in Journal B. The authors replied, explaining that the paper published in Journal A reported preliminary findings whereas that published in Journal B reported the final results based on a larger double data set. They admitted that better communication and reciprocal information between the two corresponding authors would have avoided the problem.

COPE advice

The reply was thought to be somewhat convenient. How could all authors have signed the copyright forms without realising that two papers on the same research were due to be published? There seems to be some intent to mislead and the second paper would not have been published if the first had been known about. A further problem was that if a systematic review was undertaken it would be assumed that two separate groups of patients had been studied. Recommended to publish a notice of inadvertent duplicate publication in both journals.

Source

Case

Journal A received a paper that was rejected without peer review as it was very poorly written. There was no clear evidence of original work, it seemed to be mainly a vehicle for advertising a piece of equipment/technique developed by the authors, and it was only marginally relevant to the journal’s area of interest.

A month later, the first author of the paper submitted the same paper to Journal B, which happens to share an office with Journal A. The next month essentially the same paper originally submitted to Journal A was resubmitted. It was unchanged from the previous submission, but with a slightly different title. The editorial assistants of Journals A and B noted that, apart from some differences in the introduction, the two papers were identical. 

Journals A and B wrote to the authors, asking for a declaration that the paper had been submitted to that journal only. Both journals received a written declaration from the authors that this was the case. The editors of Journals A and B then wrote to the authors to ask for an explanation of this behaviour. The answer received was very poorly written, but essentially said that both submissions had been “interlaced. ”The authors begged the editors to continue the review process at both journals. Once the reviewers’ comments had been received they would revise the manuscripts and adapt them to the individual journal’s readership. The editors of Journals A and B planned to write to the first author’s institution. The other authors seem to be affiliated to something that sounds like a commercial enterprise. The editors suspect that the paper might have been submitted to other journals as well. There seems to be no way of checking this. As it happens, it is such an appalling paper it is unlikely to be accepted by any reputable journal.

COPE advice

How many other journals had received this paper? Perhaps the authors had been naive and were possibly not serious bona fide authors. Send a letter to the authors giving advice on how to submit a paper. Refer to the COPE Guidelines on Good Publication Practice.

Source 

Case

A journal published a paper on passive smoking in which the authors failed to declare financial support from the tobacco industry. A subsequent letter highlighted this failure, and the authors responded in a letter in which they offered some explanation, admitting funding from one source. The editor then published an editorial in which he detailed the extensive involvement of this group with the tobacco industry. The authors sent a long letter in response, which the editor is reluctant to publish without more information on the authors’ involvement with the tobacco industry. They are reluctant to comply. The authors have also submitted another paper for consideration, which the editor has refused to consider until the other matter is resolved. The editor has offered to refer the case to the journal’s ombudsman, but the authors have declined. Further evidence revealed that the corresponding author had signed a consultancy contract with a tobacco company and has received research project funding from a cigarette manufacturers’ association. The author was known to have undertaken lobbying for the industry outside his home country. The institution was aware of the author’s undertakings, as previous allegations had been reported in their national press. They were embarrassed about it, but since the author had resigned from his post, the institution had not taken the matter any further.

COPE advice

The public should be made aware that the author had received sponsorship throughout his career, and had lied about it. An article should be written to highlight his past indiscretions and include the full history of the case. He should also be reported to the country’s national research integrity council, pending the outcome of a libel case in which the author is involved.

Follow up

The editor received a subpoena to appear in court in relation to the libel case the author was pursuing against some researchers. During the hearing, evidence of even more serious allegations, including data tampering, came to light. The court found that the author’s involvement in an unprecedented fraud was an accurate description. A factual account of the court proceedings was published in the next edition of the journal along with a more detailed study, using evidence gathered during the case and exposing the tobacco company’s action in establishing a secret facility to look at the health effects of passive smoking in a European country. The author in question was the link between this facility and the tobacco company, his role being to conceal the link. COPE’s support had been an important consideration in the evidence presented at the court hearing.

Source

Case

Journal A received letters from two readers pointing out that the female component of a cohort the paper published was identical with that in a paper published in Journal B earlier that year. The two papers were sent to two independent reviewers, one of whom felt that there was a great degree of overlap between the two papers. The other agreed, but suggested that the paper submitted to Journal A had used a different statistical analysis and had looked at different problems. Neither paper cross-referenced the other and the authors had signed copyright forms in which they had agreed that the research had not been previously published in whole or in substantial part elsewhere. Journal A asked the authors to comment. They denied that the papers were similar. They admitted that the female populations were identical in both papers, but that the objectives, analyses, and results were entirely different. They explained that they had not cross-referenced because the two papers had been submitted at the same time, and that they neglected to reference each paper as being in press. But the editors of both journals felt that this was a case of redundant publication, as did one of the referees; the other felt that the incident was worth a warning issued to the authors. Both editors wanted to publish a redundancy notice and to blacklist the authors for two years. They informed the authors that the issue was being referred to COPE.

COPE advice

Why not send both papers to an independent reviewer? The excuse given by the authors is inadequate; not disclosing the previous publication is misleading. When the journals publish a notice of duplication, publish the authors’ reply alongside. Only one of the papers needs to be withdrawn – the paper with the later publication date, or the one that is incomplete. It’s rather heavy handed to “blacklist” an author. Instead consider introducing a sanction such as declining to consider any submissions from the authors for three years.

Follow up

Both papers were sent to independent reviewers who agreed that there was a significant overlap. A notice of duplication was published in Journal B, with the authors’ reply alongside. The editor of Journal A has also privately informed the authors that his journal will not accept any papers from them for two years. A notice of duplication and reply from the authors were published in the Journal A.

Source

Case

A manuscript was received from a group of authors who had not submitted to the journal in question before. The review was extremely critical and the paper was rejected. In a covering letter the reviewer said that not only was the experimental design flawed, but he was also convinced that the experiment described had never been done. He had scanned Medline and found seven other papers with the same first author each of which had a similar protocol, but in each case had used a different nutritional supplement. All the studies had been conducted on groups of 40 subjects who were given either a supplement or control substance over a period of one year. This implied that the authors had recruited over 300 subjects for these studies, which was hard to believe. The entry criteria for the study meant that the pool of eligible subjects was small, and the protocol was rigorous, not to say unethical, so it would have been difficult to have obtained informed consent.

COPE advice

As the paper had been rejected, it would be difficult to obtain further information from the authors. Make the authors aware that the reviewer had expressed concern and ask them to provide further evidence, but not the raw data. The reviewer should not be involved, and any concerns being raised should come from the editor, not the reviewer. In view of the seven other published papers, the editor would need to establish whether this was a prima facie case before contacting the other journals. Write to the authors, but if no reply is received then contact he head of the institution. Due to the serious nature of this case, impose a time limit, of say, four weeks, to obtain a response.

Source

Case

Journal A published a review paper. About a year later, the author of a paper published in 4 years ago in Journal B wrote to say that he had come across the paper in Journal A during a literature search. He pointed out that parts of this paper were virtually identical with his paper in Journal B. Although the author of the article in Journal A had made one reference to his article, this was only to one specific point and the nearly identical sections had not been referenced. The editor of Journal A wrote to the author asking for an explanation. The author of the paper in Journal B works in a faculty of law. He discussed the two papers with colleagues who agreed that this was a violation of authorship and perhaps even copyright. He wanted to know how the journal intended to remedy the situation.

COPE advice

Contact the institution of the author of Journal A. An independent assessment should made. If there are substantive findings, the journal should report this.

Follow up

The author apologised, and said that no deliberate attempt to plagiarise had been made, but the editor of Journal A contacted the author’s institution. A careful review was undertaken, concluding in the end that there was no intentional plagiarism. The editor, with consent of all parties, sent this to the author and the complainant, explaining that the journal did not intend to take any further action. Nothing further has been heard from the complainant.

The COPE guidelines do not differentiate between “conscious” and “unconscious plagiarism.” The editor indicated that although the employer had made a recommendation, she alone made the final decision, which was based on her own judgement, and not that of the employers. Many of the passages highlighted by the aggrieved author were ideas and concepts that had been published by several different authors and were not the sole provenance of that author. Although it is true that employers may have vested interests, this does not necessarily mean they are corrupt. The notion of conscious plagiarism implies that the plagiarism is intentional; unconscious plagiarism is unintentional. It is the former that attracts sanction, and the intention must be proven. The point of requesting an internal investigation is to provide the editor with the facts so that s/he may then make a judgement, and that there are no alternative mechanisms. The editor would write back to the aggrieved party detailing COPE’s discussion, stating that from the journal’s point of view, the case was closed. 

Source

Case

Two manuscripts were received by Journal X, from author A. Both were accepted and sent to the publisher. On receipt of the galley proofs, the corresponding author removed the name of the last author from both manuscripts. Shortly before the page proofs arrived, the journal editors received a request that author A be allowed to remove author B from the authors’ list and instead make a suitable acknowledgement. The editors asked if author A had sought agreement from author B concerning this change, and added that it was not journal policy to make these changes. The reply from author A included a long and detailed account of what was clearly a personal dispute that had developed between these two authors subsequent to submission of the manuscripts. The editors, however, decided to reinstate author B according to the original author listing, and notified the publisher. 

Some weeks later the publisher received a communication from author B indicating the possibility that his name may have been removed from three manuscripts that he was previously involved in preparing and submitting. It seemed that author B was in fact the senior author, while author A was a researcher in his laboratory. On further investigation, it was discovered that the third manuscript had been rejected by the editors of Journal X, but was later tracked to Journal Y (who also used the same publisher). It was also noted that author B had already been removed. The publisher alerted the editors of Journal Y to the problem and the manuscript was rejected. The editors considered contacting the host institution, but discovered that the institute itself was racked with scandal and staff disputes. The editors finally decided to reject all future submissions from both authors A and B.

COPE advice

The authors had behaved improperly, but a decision had been reached by the editor without appropriate evidence. The funders of the research should be contacted. Further investigation was required, and even though the institutions had their own troubles, they should be informed, with a copy sent to a higher authority.

Source

Case

A manuscript was submitted with a covering letter clearly stating the originality and unpublished nature of the work. The authors stated that the results had already been orally presented at a meeting the previous year. Before sending the manuscript for review the editors discovered that the manuscript contained 60% of the Materials and Methods text and 90% of the Results section of a previously published paper. Even the data were identical. Moreover, the authors’ citation to the first article suggested that it was different from the current work (the corresponding author and the first author were the same in both manuscripts). The editors were not convinced that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead, but nevertheless they rejected the manuscript with a stern warning to both the first author and the corresponding author.

COPE advice

There had been some deception and a case of redundant publication, not plagiarism. The authors failed to declare an overlap, and citation is not enough. The authors should be given a chance to reply. A reminder should be sent (giving a time limited response), with reference made to the COPE guidelines otherwise the matter will be referred to the authors’ institution.

Follow up

The authors emailed a detailed and apologetic reply. While the editors were convinced that there had been no deliberate attempt to mislead, the manuscript was rejected because a large part of the work had already been published.

Source

Case

A paper on a controversial topic from three authors was published. All three authors completed forms to say that they did not have competing interests. This was stated at the end of the paper. A reader subsequently contacted the journal to say that she had clear evidence that one of the authors did have competing interests. He had, she said, been involved in legal cases and received substantial payments for his work. The article related to these legal cases. The author intends to write to the complainant and ask her permission to send her letter to the author. If he accepts that he did have a competing interest, then the journal will publish a statement saying so.

COPE advice

The public has the right to know if there were conflicting interests and that if there was any doubt, it is better to disclose. Just because the material is in the public domain does not exonerate an author from declaring such interests.

Source

Case

A paper from Finland in a controversial area of vaccine research was peer reviewed and provisionally accepted. At the revision stage, the journal received a letter from a researcher based at an immunotherapy company in the United States, raising serious doubts over the analysis of the Finnish data. This author claimed to have been involved in the research, and proposed an alternative interpretation of the data. This letter was forwarded to the authors, who acknowledged that the American author had highlighted some major errors which they corrected in a further revision of their paper. But they disputed his interpretation of their data. The Finnish authors acknowledged the advice given by the US author, but did not declare any financial input from him. They denied that he should have been cited as a contributor on the original paper. In due course, the paper was published. The American correspondent continued to telephone and e-mail various members of the editorial team, seeking to have published alongside the paper a short report, carrying his opposing interpretation of the data. This request was declined, on the grounds that he was not the author of the paper and therefore had no ownership of the data. But he insisted that the original idea for the study had been his, and that he had contributed more than £500 for secretarial support to enable the study to be carried out.

COPE advice

The American did not do the research; he generated the hypothesis that the Finns tested, using the data they had generated. He could be a contributor, therefore, as he meets the criteria for authorship, and his money was also accepted, suggesting collaboration. The American published a letter in the journal about the Finnish data, so he has been able to respond to the findings. It is not up to the editor to determine who is a contributor and who is an author; it is up to the Finnish employees to decide. 

Source

Case

A letter containing details of a case report was submitted to the journal. The authors were from Japan. After peer review and revision, the case report was accepted and a proof was sent to the authors. Two anonymous letters were then received, both from Japan. Both letters claimed that the author “has prized honour above everything else” and that he had submitted “nonsense data.”

COPE advice

Editor advised to write to author and his head of department to ask if they have concerns, citing a similar experience that had been submitted to COPE before where the anonymous complaint was found to be justified. 

Source

Case

A paper was submitted to journal A with a covering letter stating that it was entirely original. However, when the editor looked at the references he found considerable overlap with a paper already published in journal B about the same infection outbreak, but with a completely different set of authors bar one. A comparison of the papers showed that there was considerable overlap. When challenged, the authors of the journal A paper defended themselves by saying that their study describes the clinical aspects whereas the paper in journal B describes epidemiology and control. They also state that they were completely transparent about the existence of the earlier paper in journal B.

There are several points which concern the editor:

– there are inconsistencies between the two papers;

– the authors did not send a copy of the paper from journal B with their submission to journal A and the covering letter stated that the work was original;

– it is not clear that this particular infection outbreak had been described before. Admittedly, there is some expanded clinical information in the paper for journal A and the authors did refer to the microbiology and epidemiology being described in a previous paper in journal B;

– the journal B paper contains a lot of clinical material and it is surprising that only one of the authors is on both papers.

COPE advice

Arguments about the degree of overlap might never be resolved. The editor should seek independent assessment of the degree of overlap. Real key here is the degree of disclosure/transparency about the existence of the earlier paper. If the authors were explicit about this, then there is no problem.

Source

Case

A paper was published and seven authors were credited. B was thanked for his contribution in the acknowledgements section. One year later B wrote to the editor, outlining two alleged incidents related to this paper. First, the cohort reported paper was one that B had been working. He sought collaboration with another research group. A grant was applied for and granted.

At that time B, who was a co-signatory on the grant application, moved abroad but the grant specifically included money for him to travel back to his home country to continue the collaboration. Moreover, all the collaborators agreed that he would be a co-author of all subsequent papers. As the collaboration proceeded, B felt he was being edged out of the group. A senior colleague in his home country felt the same way and eventually resigned from the collaboration. B was unaware that a paper was being prepared for publication from this study. The first time that he saw the paper was after publication. He only contacted the editor after several colleagues urged him to bring the matter out into the open. Not only was he not included as a full author on the paper, but his permission had not been sought for acknowledgement, in direct contravention of the Vancouver Group guidelines. 

The second allegation concerning this paper is that the hypothesis subtly shifted between the grant application and the published paper. The hypothesis as stated in the grant application is different in an important way from that stated in the introduction to the paper. The results of the research support the hypothesis as cited in the paper, but directly contradict the hypothesis as cited in the grant application. B alleges that the research group concerned has indulged in post hoc hypothesis generation so that the results reflect their beliefs about the meaning of the data rather than their pre-specifed hypothesis.

Another paper from this research group, in which B is cited as an author, again without his permission, is currently being held by the editor of a specialist journal pending the outcome of this particular case. All of the co-signatories and collaborators on the original grant application have been asked (with B’s permission) for their view on the allegations. A further complication is that although the grant awarding body has a procedure for dealing with allegations of misconduct, one of the authors of the paper is one of their unit directors.

COPE advice

The editor was advised to inform the grant awarding body of this case and tell them that he had referred the matter to COPE. The editor should also urge the grant awarding body to act with some urgency and, that given the circumstances, the initial investigation cannot be referred to the unit director. The editor should await responses from all collaborators and authors and then show them to B.

Follow up

The editor heard from all of the authors that the individual making the allegation knew about the work all along and they refute his allegations. Their response to the editor’s challenge about the hypothesis change was that that was the nature of scienti?c progress. However, from the responses,it is clear that there has been a major falling out between the two sides of the collaboration. However,this team did not agree with the allegations either. The senior author now feels that the editor is “destroying”the collaboration and that all parties should get together and discuss. In addition the editor has now been contacted by an editor of another journal who has received a paper from the same stable which has problems around authorship. 

Source

Case

A paper was submitted to journal A which was published as a rapid communication. It was subsequently discovered that the major US journal in this specialty had published other findings from the same set of patients, and that the paper had been considered by them at the same time. The messages of the two papers are closely related but different, but either one could have been amalgamated into the other for one publication. All of this came to light when the authors submitted a further paper to journal A about the same patients. This time they used a new technique to expand on their studies which seemed perfectly reasonable; what is strange is that they did not acknowledge that the samples they analysed were taken from patients whose cases had been used and published before. Indeed, neither of the two previous papers acknowledges the other. A letter was sent to the senior author, asking for an explanation. The senior author responded by saying that her submission letter to me stating that none of the work had been published elsewhere was a proforma letter and the signature was an oversight.

COPE advice

There is no problem in using the same samples for different assays, but it is very important to be explicit. The head of the institution should be informed: non-disclosure is always a reason to inform the head of the author’s institution. A statement of redundancy should be published in all three journals but the editors’responses should be consistent.

Source

Case

A paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal has recently been found to be unsuitable for publication. The authors have been highlighted in other journals for disseminating misinformation regarding the treatment of COVID-19. An expression of concern has been issued on another article, similar to the one we are close to publishing, in another publisher's journal. We looked into the paper in our system further and have decided the peer review comments are insufficient. We would like to rescind the decision on this manuscript and send it to peer review for further comments. We do not want to add to the literature casuing misinformation regarding the tratment of COVID-19.

During the production process of the manuscript, the author has emailed the production editor saying people will try to pay us to shut down the paper before it is published. This has added an extra layer of concern to how the situation is handled.

What the editors plan to do

Contact the author to explain the manuscript requires further peer review.

Send the manuscript for two further sets of peer review comments.

Provide the author with the new set of peer review comments.

COPE advice

Journal editors have complete authority over what is published in their journal, at any stage, so even if a paper has received an acceptance decision, if concerns have been raised the editors may choose to have additional peer review, delay publication, or even overturn the decision to accept. That said, given the additional publicity in this case, the journal may want to minimise the risks of bad publicity or claims of censorship, and place the manuscript on hold rather than rescinding the acceptance at this stage. 

Any decision to have the paper re-reviewed should be based on whether there are deemed to have been flaws in the original peer review process or in the paper itself. For example, if the peer reviewers missed fact checks, exaggeration bias, or overconfident reporting of findings or the literature, the technical editor can ask for revisions directly rather than sending it out again. Conversely, re-review would be recommended there were concerns about the original peer-review process, such as undeclared conflicts of interest or recognition that reviewers were author-nominated reviewers and returned too fast and favourable reports.

Additional review would also be necessary if the editor realises that the dataset or research ethics are questionable because of a retraction elsewhere involving the same study, or there has been duplicate or salami publishing. If the authors did not declare that their other article was under investigation this would be a failure to disclose information.

Source 

Case

An article is submitted to a journal and accepted for future publication. The authors receive the acceptance letter and the script is waiting for the final publication process (within 4-6 months).

During this time the authors ask the journal if they can present the full text of the article at a conference (which is going to be held before the publication by the journal). They also declare that the conference will not publish the manuscript (the abstract or full text) elsewhere.

COPE advice

In general terms, copyright law is about the original expression of ideas, but not the ideas themselves - so while it might restrict an author from distributing the paper at the session or reading it line-by-line (if copyright has been transferred to the journal), it would not prohibit the author from crafting a new presentation using the ideas from that manuscript.

That said, the answer is dependent on the terms of acceptance with the journal. Does the journal require authors to agree not to disclose the content in any format until after the paper is published? Is the author restricted from sharing the as-yet unpublished manuscript? It would certainly be wise for the authors to avoid sharing the unpublished manuscript with a conference committee to prevent mistaken duplicate publication.

The ICMJE advises that ‘Authors should also consider how dissemination of their findings outside of scientific presentations at meetings may diminish the priority journal editors assign to their work.’ It would also be good practice for the authors to state in the article that the results were presented in part (or in full) at xx conference.

In the interest of transparency we would also recommend that the authors declare to the conference organisers and session participants that the content of the presentation is based on a forthcoming article. Some conferences do not allow the presentation of findings that have already been published, even when the publication date lies between sending in the abstract and the date of the conference.

Source

Case

A paper was submitted to a journal. While the paper was being processed, the authors contacted the journal and advised that a predatory journal had published the same paper without their permission (the authors apparently submitted it in error, then withdrew it, but the journal proceeded with publishing). The authors are currently pursuing a legal case against the predatory journal to have the article taken down, but have asked the editor to proceed with their journal’s usual review processes.

The journal would not normally consider or publish a paper already published elsewhere but have not encountered this situation where a predatory journal has published something against an author's will (and presumably without any quality control, peer review, etc). It is possible that the predatory journal may never take down the article, blocking the work from publication in a legitimate journal.

COPE advice

The situation is unfortunate but not uncommon, and must be considered as a life experience for the authors. Whether or not it was an error, the authors submitted their paper to the predatory journal, which was published, has a DOI, is searchable/findable/citable by meta-analyses and other reviews. Hence the journal should not consider or publish the paper while a formally published version exists elsewhere, whether or not the authors agreed to it and whether or not the publisher is disreputable.

The editor may wish to suggest that the authors speak to the library and/or legal team at their institution, who may be able to help in having the illegitimate version of the paper removed. If the authors did not transfer copyright or approve the proofs, then this puts them in a stronger position. However, if copyright has been transferred or a publishing agreement signed and the status of manuscript acceptance has been acknowledged, legal proceedings would have to take their course first.

If the predatory journal refuses or ignores the authors' request to take down the paper, there is nothing the journal can do. Unfortunately, this is an issue between the authors and the "predatory" journal, and it is likely that it may never be resolved. For future submissions, the editor might wish to highlight to the authors the Think.Check.Submit. initiative, which provides tools to help researchers identify trusted journals for their research.

Source

Case

Journal X has been contacted by an author who would like to submit a review article. The author responded to a request for an invited review from a predatory journal without realizing it was a predatory journal. The author submitted the article only to receive an unexpected invoice and clear evidence of no peer review. The author investigated the journal and then realized the predatory nature of this journal.

To remove the submitted manuscript from this journal, the author communicated via email, phone and certified letter, and also contacted members of the editorial board, but has received no return communication. Periodically, the manuscript has disappeared from the journal’s website, only to reappear in a later issue. The author never signed a copyright agreement and never paid the journal to publish the article. The author would like to have the manuscript published in a legitimate journal but does not wish to be guilty of duplicate publication.

COPE advice

As there was no copyright transfer, the paper could be published in the legitimate journal, ideally with an editorial note on the paper explaining what has happened. Otherwise, the author may have to write off this paper to experience and lessons learned. 

Another suggestion was to threaten legal action – the predatory journal may back down if legal action is threatened.

Follow up

Author sent another letter via certified mail to the predatory journal, but it was returned unopened (as no one was present at the address to accept the letter). She did not threaten legal action because her university’s legal counsel would not endorse that approach and she was unable to obtain a response from anyone at the journal via phone, email or certified letter in order to communicate that threat effectively. However, she then sent a message to the publisher of the predatory journal: “Immediately remove my article from your website. If you do not do so immediately, I will take legal action”. The publisher responded by asking her for the article title and associated journal. The author provided this information and indicated she would proceed with legal action if the article was not removed from the journal’s website by a given date. She will now proceed with submission to a legitimate journal, and the editor of the legitimate journal is comfortable that duplicate publication is no longer a problem.

Source

Case

In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D) in two of the manuscripts.

Four of these manuscripts (manuscripts 1, 5, 6 and 8) were rejected after the editorial review because they were not found to be original. One has been sent to reviewers and 6 are with associate editors for initial review. One of the associate editors has advised that the manuscript they had been reviewing (manuscript 10) has a similarity index of 97% The editor in chief checked the manuscript and found that the author had completely copied it from a previously published article although it was stated in the cover letter that the material had not been previously published or submitted elsewhere for publication. The author only changed the author names.

The editor in chief also checked the other submissions, including the rejected ones. Three of the rejected manuscripts (1, 5 and 8) and another manuscript under review (2) had verbatim texts, comprising 50–94% of the related manuscript. The other two manuscripts (6 and 9) were duplicated from previously published articles containing more than 50% verbatim text where author A is a common author.

The editor in chief has halted the review process of the 11 manuscripts until the matter has been resolved. Additionally, they intend to contact the author and coauthors’ institutions and proposed not accepting further submissions from author A for at least 5 years.

COPE advice

The editor has an obligation to consider the merits of each manuscript individually; rejecting all is not justified. COPE does not recommend banning authors for ethical infractions, so if the author is not banned, it seems logical that each submission must be evaluated carefully. The editor is probably correct in suspecting the worst, given the history of this author, but that should just prompt a careful review, perhaps plagiarism checking all manuscripts before the review process begins rather than after.

The editor should contact the authors' institutions, particularly because this individual is a resident, so that corrective action can be taken before this author gets out into the competitive work world where pressure to publish can create the incentive to cut corners. This behaviour needs to be corrected at source. 

Source

Case

A journal’s editors were informed about a plagiarism case just before the last step in the volume publication process. The publication fee for the paper was already paid by the author and the author completed and signed the publication agreement in which confirmed the paper's originality. The author was informed of the plagiarism issue and also that the paper would be withdrawn from publication. The author then requested reimbursement of the payment.

COPE advice

The editors need not refund the publication fee, which has been spent (at least in part) in good faith in manuscript preparation and the administration process. Also, it was the authors who, by their actions, voided the publication contract. The journal could publicise a no-refunds policy in the future on its website for cases such as a paper needing to be withdrawn after acceptance.

The journal did not breach the copyright of the original paper that was plagiarised as the paper was not published, but the author infringed the copyright.  Unpublished, the plagiarised paper still represents a copyright violation by the person who plagiarised the article. Anyone who copies a third party's copyrighted content (setting aside "fair use") without permission has violated that person's copyright. 

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Case

A journal received a manuscript using secondary analysis of existing medical records in which there was no indication that ethics approval was obtained from a recognized ethics review board or that participants gave their informed consent to be included in the study. Instead, the authors explained that the study had been based on a secondary analysis of existing medical records and that no patient information had been passed on to a third party. Patients were identified by codes rather than names so that links could be made with different outcomes. Patient names were neither available nor utilised in the analysis and all records were held securely in a password-protected database which was only available to programme team members. They also stated that 'The conduct of this study did not inflict direct harm on patients, nor expose them to unnecessary risk as a result of accessing and reviewing their medical records'. 

The journal’s understanding is that if the secondary data are anonymised and contain no identifying information, then ethical review is generally not required, but no ethics review appears to have been done in this study, at any stage.

COPE advice

It should suggest the editors consider the following before deciding on how to proceed:

1. How large is the data set – if it is small, is there a greater chance of identifying individuals?
2. Where were the data collected and for what purpose – if the location is very identifiable or the data were collected for a unique drug trial for example, would that increase the chance of patient identification?
3. Why was the study not approved by an institutional review board – was there no appropriate oversight committee in the location?
4. Was the original study institutional review board approved and what were the conditions of that approval?
5. Was the original or any other secondary analysis of data from the original study published and, if so, what approvals were or were not noted by the authors in the publications?

At the very least, suggest the editors need to go back to the authors and get answers to the questions above and find out if retroactive approval could be obtained. If there was institutional review board approval of the original study, that would be a useful piece of information in the decision-making process. Council would caution against rejecting the article because it could be published elsewhere without anyone questioning the ethics.

It may turn out to be reasonable to publish the study, but institutional review board approval is always a good idea in research involving human subjects, even if at the end of the process it is decided that there is no risk. Researchers deciding for themselves that there is no risk is a conflict of interest, no matter how reasonable the case.

The final decision will require a lot of input related to the issues identified and a thoughtful discussion of the editorial committee based on any additional information received.

Source

Case

Several years ago a previous editor of a journal accepted an article for publication following peer review. The current editor feels that the article should not have been accepted in the first instance, but rejected instead. After acceptance, the article was sent to a copy editor who was scheduled to work on it. However, the process was stopped by the previous editor and the copy editor. The language was very poor and was deemed to be un-editable. Also, the equations were incomprehensible.

The author has recently enquired as to when their article will be published online as it was accepted five years ago. But the editor does not think it is right to publish the article.

COPE advice

This situation should never have arisen in the first place – the journal should take responsibility for their mistake and be as transparent and up-front as possible with the authors. The journal cannot reject the paper given that the paper was formally accepted. The journal should offer to pay the costs for language editing.

The best way forward in this very awkward situation is to work with the authors to improve the paper. There are many good editorial services that can improve the paper. 

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Case

Some authors from a company recommended a peer reviewer on submitting their manuscript, who was then asked to review the manuscript. This reviewer recommended acceptance without change. One other reviewer recommended major revision (a methodological reviewer not a content expert) and the third reviewer recommended rejection. The editor found it unusual for a review to recommend acceptance without change so looked up this reviewer and found a manuscript in press at another journal where the reviewer, as an author, disclosed relationships with the same company the authors work at. These included honoraria, consultant fees, and advisory board participation. The manuscript in press indeed was about the same drug covered in the submission. The reviewer answered "no" to the question asked during the peer review process on whether they had any conflicts of interest related to the research. The editor confirmed the reviewer had a valid email address.

COPE advice

The journal had challenged both the authors and the reviewer on their failure to disclose relevant conflicts of interest. The authors stated that they had not known when they recommended the reviewer that this person had links with the company. The reviewer confirmed this, and also said that they had not been involved in the work which produced the paper; thus they had felt that there was no conflict.

The reviewer did have an interest which should have been declared. They should either have raised this with the editor, allowing the journal to make a decision on how to handle the situation, or declined to write a review.

The editors should dismiss this review and seek a replacement if their policy is to have three reviews per paper, or go ahead with the two remaining reports.

Source

Case

This is a general scenario which has been observed in increasing numbers. We are finding that some reviewers provide a referee’s report which include a request to cite a number of papers, which on closer inspection are all authored by the referee. The journal considers this to be clear citation manipulation and has contacted COPE for advice on the matter.

COPE advice

Reviewers not uncommonly recommend citations to their own work, and the editor’s response should depend on the wider context of the reviewer report and whether this is a repeated behaviour. In a small field or where an author has genuinely overlooked relevant contributions by the reviewer, it may be appropriate to suggest these references. It is also possible that the author has deliberately omitted references to a particular authority for personal or other reasons, or is engaged in some form of citation manipulation themselves. If the reviewer has only made one or two suggestions this is also less likely to raise a concern, even if they are all to their own work. In this case the editor can make a judgement on whether to pass the recommendations on to the author or how they frame the request to include the citations.

In other cases, the reviewer may be motivated by personal gain and if it looks like a repeated pattern may merit removing them from the reviewer database and notifying their institution. Another flag can be if the reviewer gives DOIs rather than full references in their suggestions as this can be a way to disguise the fact that they are referring to their own work. Ultimately, this behaviour could compromise the anonymity of the review process (if this is the journal’s practice) and should also be considered in this light. 

The journal should take the issue up with the reviewer. The journal should also review their instructions for reviewers to ensure that they cover appropriate behaviour regarding suggestions for citations. Finally, they could consider a policy where reviewers agree to be named if they are making suggestions to cite their own work.

Source

Case

The journal received multiple complaints from two ‘whistleblowers’ in country A regarding the methodology presented in an article published in 2021. The Editors began an investigation into the paper, using evidence provided by the whistleblowers. The Editors felt that based on the provided evidence, an investigation should be carried out. The authors, who were also from country A, were made aware of the fact their article was under investigation, as the journal needed to request underlying data for the investigation. They were not given any details regarding the complainants.

The authors provided the data via email, and at the same time indicated there was a conflict with a coauthor over a personal issue which they were currently resolving. None of the whistleblowers was listed as a coauthor on the paper under investigation.

The journal later received retractions of the complaints from both whistleblowers, one of whom explained that they were receiving pressure from their own institution to do so, and were at risk of losing their job. The journal has opted to continue the investigation, given the Editors had already looked into the paper and felt an investigation was warranted.

COPE advice

Journals are obliged to pursue a complaint once made as they have been made aware that there is a potential problem with the article. It is therefore not possible for authors to retract and halt the process and the editors are correct to continue with their investigation. However, there are several mitigations that can be taken to protect them. First, the individuals who raised the concern can inform their institution that they have withdrawn their complaint, even if the journal is still obliged to investigate. Second, the journal can state that they are keeping the identity of the source anonymous in order to protect them. Ultimately, however, it is the integrity of the article which is the editor’s key concern.

Source

Case

A journal received a request from University A for a published paper to be retracted, citing ethical issues with the grant application submitted by an author from University B. The journal is satisfied that the rigorous editorial processes required by the journal were followed prior to publication and asked for specific details of the ethical breach; evidence that all authors on the publication had been advised of the request for retraction; and the results of the institutional investigation into the matter. 

A conversation between the journal and Author 1 revealed that Author 1 (from University A) had sent Author 2 (from University B) a copy of their grant application. Author 2 copy and pasted sections of the application to secure a similar, yet separate grant. While the specific details of each grant application are unique, University A claims that text used to describe the objectives, project process and management, participants and target groups, and outcomes is identical. Author 1 is listed on both grant applications and is a coauthor on the manuscript under investigation. University A has since returned the grant funding secured by Author 1 related to the second grant (secured by Author 2). The project funding is not directly related to the topic/content of the manuscript in question, rather it appears to be salary support for Author 2.

The journal considers this an issue between University A and Author 2, and feels University A should contact University B so they can investigate and advise the journal of the outcome of that investigation. The journal does not consider that the issue has any effect on the results of the published manuscript, and it is not at risk of endangering anyone utilising the results, negating the need for urgent retraction by the journal. The journal is also concerned about retracting an article that has multiple authors from multiple international institutions.

COPE advice

The editors are correct to act in the way that they have done, and should pass the matter on to the institutions for proper investigation. If the institutions subsequently have recommendations for action on the article (for example, if it is found that the research was conducted improperly) then they can communicate this to the journal, although the journal is not obliged to follow their recommendation if they feel that the concerns did not affect the content of the article. If the institution’s findings do have a direct bearing on the article then the editors could consider a retraction or a correction. The editors might also want to consider notifying the funding organisation of the situation in case they want to investigate further.

Source

Case

A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitted manuscript with the publications provided by the reviewer and concluded that the submission presents a severe case of plagiarism.

The editor contacted the corresponding author by email and requested an explanation within a week. The corresponding author replied within the deadline but the editor did not find the explanation satisfactory. He then contacted the heads of the corresponding author’s institution by email but has not heard from them as yet, even though he has sent them several reminder mails.

In the meantime, the editor has made the decision to reject the submission because of plagiarism. In his letter of rejection, the editor has informed the corresponding author that he has taken action and contacted the heads of the author’s institution.

COPE advice

Finally, a response was received from the institution. The Institution Commission, comprising the Dean and vice Dean of the Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and the Dean of Curricula Studiorum, agreed that a substantial part of the article contained evident plagiarism.

At the Institutional hearing, the author declared that during the preparation of the manuscript the contributions of several authors were collated by himself, assembled by himself and that he failed to recognise that part of the manuscript which had been prepared by other participating coauthors were taken from another article published early. These parts of the manuscript had been sent to the author only as a starting point for discussion and were not intended as part of the content of the final paper. There was, however, a misunderstanding.

As a consequence, the Institution Commission proposed the following sanctions:

• All data from each individual experiment and the raw data from the database as well as abstracts and all drafts and final manuscripts prepared for publication by the author MUST be fully reviewed by the Institution Commission for a period of 2 years.
• The author has also been informed that should the Institution Committee note any discrepancy between the raw data and the final manuscript, he will be forbidden from presenting data at all national and international meetings.
• Furthermore, he will also be banned from presenting at the University Scientific Meetings. 

The editor was satisfied with the investigation and now considers the case closed.

Source

Case

A manuscript was submitted via our electronic submission system and processed in accordance with the standard procedures of the journal. This was originally a single author submission, and in the covering letter the author suggested two potential reviewers. 

The reviews of the original version came with conclusions "Accept after major revision" (rev A) and "Accept after minor revision" (rev B). On that basis, the Associate Editor submitted a decision "Accept after major revision", and requested the author to prepare it.

The revised version of the paper arrived. Without sending it to any more reviewers, the Associate Editor decided to recommend acceptance of the paper in its present form. Examination of the revised manuscript led to a disturbing discovery. This version was headed by two authors, and the name of the second author was the same as the name of reviewer A.

The whole reviewing procedure was immediately halted. The editor-in-chief together with the Managing Editor sent an email to the original author with a request to confirm in writing the authorship of the revised version (this was done also because in the covering letter and in the revised version there were different sets of names). The author confirmed that the revised version was co-authored by two authors: he and reviewer A.

The author was asked by email to explain how the second author, reviewer A, had been included as a co-author of this contribution? The reply was that: “Reviewer A helped me improve the manuscript in grammatical and logical feature, and provided some new references. Furthermore, we share some detailed skills in the experimental methods, so I added him as a co-author in the revision paper.”

This situation led the editor-in-chief to assign the paper to reviewer C to determine if the manuscript is indeed worth publishing. The final recommendation of that review was that the manuscript should be rejected.

COPE advice

Whether the editor has asked the reviewer for an explanation of his behaviour. Has he given his side of the story? It is possible that the criteria for authorship might be satisfied by the reviewer. If reviewer made a substantial contribution to the revised paper, he could legitimately become an author. So there may be a legitimate reason for the reviewer being an author and the editor needs to contact the reviewer and clarify this. If the editor is satisfied that the reviewer is an author, the paper should be re-reviewed and sent out to a new reviewer. It may then be rejected on scientific grounds. The Forum did not think reporting the case to the institution was a good idea at the present time.

Follow up

The editorial was contacted the reviewer with a kind request to explain his side of the story. At the same time, the manuscript was evaluated by an independent reviewer and the recommendation was to reject this submission. 

Source

Case

Through a reviewer, editor was informed that an author had submitted a paper without the approval of at least one of the other authors. This appeared to be confirmed by two other authors. In response to editor's bringing this possibility to the first author’s attention, he asserted that all coauthors had given informed consent to publish the work as it is. Editor has requested that he provides written corroboration of this. If this is not forthcoming editor will send the paper to the other authors and seek permission to identify their views to him.

Another reviewer raised concerns about the ethics of a component of the submitted investigation. The author has responded that the work was investigated by the university to which at that time he was affiliated and received ethics approval. Editor has requested written confirmation of this. The author is no longer at the institution at which the work is reputed to have been conducted: he quotes as his current affiliation an institution that does not exist and gives only an email contact.

Additional criticisms of the work from a scientific perspective made it clear it was not acceptable for publication and editor has informed the author of this. The author has two other manuscripts in submission and editor has requested documented confirmation that the listed coauthors of these approve of their content. Furthermore, editor's attention has been drawn to items in four other journals raising issues about coauthors’ approval of other papers from the same first author and additional concerns about misappropriation of material from the publications of others.

In his response to editor's request for clarification of the issues raised with regard to the paper editor rejected, the author stated his intention to “formally let open further legal steps against you”. Nevertheless, it seems clear that editor has a responsibility to continue investigating the foregoing issues.

COPE advice

This is a case that perhaps can never be satisfactorily resolved. It is very difficult for editors to intervene in authorship disputes. The advice was for the editor to contact the author’s institution and ask them to investigate the authorship dispute. As the editor suspects unethical research, that is another reason to approach the institution, report the matter and request an investigation. This is as much as the editor can do with regard to the submitted papers. On the wider issue, the editor could publish an expression of concern for the papers already published and alert the other journals where the previous papers have been published.

Source

Case

This is a report of two cases of possible misconduct by the same author(s): one that was identified during the review process and one only after it was published.

The editorial believe the author tried to publish a paper that was a verbatim copy of one that had appeared in another journal a few years earlier. A vigilant reviewer of the “copied” paper alerted the editor that, on verifying the references, he had found that the paper was a carbon copy of an already published article. Having realised that the author and the same graduate student had already published a paper in our journal a year before, we took the time to search the literature for any IP violation from the first paper. We discovered that the paper already published in our journal was a verbatim (not a single word or graph changed) copy of another one.

Also, one of the two reviewers who accepted the first paper that was published in our journal was the author of the original paper from which it was copied.

The editorial then wrote to the authors informing them of the two discoveries and requesting an explanation, an apology or retraction, and notifying them that we may contact the University President about their unethical behaviour. The senior author withdrew the paper being currently reviewed but nothing else.

Contact with the president of the university was unsuccessful. Editorial then wrote to the Ambassador (High Commissioner) of this person’s country, explaining the incident and the cloud of suspicion such behaviour (far from being isolated) would bring to science from their country. There is received no response despite a reminder.

The first published paper was retracted from journal and the guilty authors were named. Editorial also informed 6–7 journals in their field not to accept any papers from this individual or his group.

COPE advice

It can be very disheartening to follow-up on these inquiries when no response is forthcoming. It was suggested that the editor could now mention the fact that he has brought the case to COPE – sometimes this elicits a response. How the reviewer did not spot the plagiarism and suggested looking into the reviewer’s conduct? Another suggestion was to see if the author belongs to a society or association that the editor could lodge a complaint with. Other advice was to write an editorial in the journal highlighting the issue. This could be done anonymously and would demonstrate to the reader that the journal’s system is working and also that this type of misconduct will not be tolerated by the journal.

Source

Case

Possible multiple publication of studies in four different journals was detected. Close inspection of the articles in question revealed that the author had directly copied and reused extensive sections of text, including tables in all four articles. 

Three UK authors submitted a paper 1 to Journal A based on the lead author’s PhD thesis. This paper was accepted by Journal A and a copyright assignment form was signed. This article appeared in Journal A. 

Six months after submission of paper 1, the lead author presented a conference paper 2 based on the same PhD research and submitted it to Journal B. This too was accepted and a copyright agreement was signed. This article went on to appear in Journal B six months after submission.

One year after submitting the conference paper 2, the lead author gave another conference paper 3 based on their PhD research which was subsequently published in Journal C. 

Subsequently, another paper was published in Journal D, again based on the same PhD research. The date of submitting the paper and signing the copyright form is unknown.

Thus, within 2 years, 4 publications based on the same research were made. In addition, it was discovered that there is significant overlap in the dates the articles were submitted and copyright forms signed. This, coupled with the extent of the similarities between the articles, lead us to believe that the author would have been aware they were submitting near identical articles to multiple journals over a short space of time

COPE advice

The advice from COPE was to consult the flowchart for “redundant publication in a published paper”. The flowchart advises that you check the degree of overlap. If it is substantial, contact the authors. If an unsatisfactory response is received, the editor should consider publishing a notice of redundant publication or retraction. Sometimes the author makes a genuine mistake or the instructions to authors are not clear enough (does your journal say that submitted work should be original and not submitted elsewhere) or the author is very junior. In such cases writing to the author explaining the situation and outlining the expected behaviour is sufficient. However, if the editor is satisfied that this is not a simple error and an unsatisfactory response has been received, he should consider contacting the author’s institution and asking them to investigate. The Forum would also advise contacting the other journals.

Source 

Case

In the process of reviewing the submitted manuscript a reviewer informed editorial that s(he) was working on a review of a manuscript and thought that there had to be more qualitative studies on this subject. S(he) began to look and found fourth articles not cited by the author.

The fourth study was published in another journal but was written from the exact angle, reporting the same data and in the same way as the article submitted to us. While some of the wording had been changed and the introductory material moved around a bit, it was essentially the same study. The quotes describing each category had also been changed, but little else. Surprisingly, one of the major differences is that the published article contained a much richer explanation of the methods, a sample description and study limitations than the version submitted for consideration.

COPE advice

Whether the same authors were involved – was this a case of plagiarism or duplicate publication? Any action depends on the journal guidelines. Does the journal document in its guidelines how much overlap is allowed? If the authors are the same, the advice was to follow the steps in the COPE flowchart “Suspected redundant publication in a submitted manuscript”. The flowchart advises that you check the degree of overlap. If it is substantial, contact the authors and request an explanation. If an unsatisfactory response is received, reject the paper and contact the authors explaining your position and the expected future behaviour. The editor might also like to consider contacting the author’s institution and informing them of the author’s misconduct.

Sometimes the author makes a genuine mistake or the instructions to authors are not clear enough or the author is very junior. In such cases writing to the author explaining the situation and outlining the expected behaviour is sufficient.

Follow up

It was rejected the article and the author said he learned an important lesson. The editorial board met and it was unanimous that the situation should be reported to the author’s university academic integrity committee for review.

The author self-reported within his university and did a faculty workshop about the issue. He submitted some information to the editor that will be incorporated into their editorial on duplicate publication.

Source

Case

A paper was accepted and published in journal A which dealt with a cohort of patients with an unusual respiratory pathogen. A similar paper had been published in a US journal B a few months before. It dealt with more or less the same patients (a few more had been added) and provided some extra secondary outcome data but with the same conclusions.

The editor of journal A considered this to be duplication but the authors deny this on the grounds that there are further data.

COPE advice

This is a difficult issue as the editor considers it a case of duplicate publication but the authors disagree. Some journals ask authors to send related papers when submitting their articles for publication. The Forum agreed that journals should have some form of declaration in the instructions to authors or the submission information must be very clear on the rules of duplicate publication. Some argued that a rule of thumb is that if the “extra” data do not stand alone, then it is probably duplicate publication.

In this difficult area, the decision really needs to be left to the judgement of the editor and a correction published in both journals if duplicate publication is believed to have occurred. Software can sometimes help as it can give (in percentages) the amount of overlap between two papers and then editors can judge what amount is acceptable. However, if undetected, all agreed that this is a serious problem as the data may be counted twice in meta-analyses.

Follow up

The editor indicated to the author that this was a case of duplicate publication and the paper was withdrawn from the website. A notice of duplicate publication was published in the editor’s journal.

Source

Case

The Editor-in-Chief of a journal received a message from a corresponding author of a brief communication, stating that the proposed editorial edits were beyond typical formatting edits at this stage. They felt said many edits were not appropriate, would need further response and suggested holding this article (which had already been in process with the journal for over a year) for the next editor-in-chief when they are appointed. 

The section editor recommended the article for acceptance with the proposed editorial revisions and overall there was agreement that the revisions improved readability and clarity especially for readers that may not be well acquainted with the overall topic of the paper. There had also been some issues during the review process with the authors not always complying with recommendations from the section editor.

The present Editor-in-Chief has decided not to renew their contract, based on repeat anonymous accusations that the timelines of the journal are too long.

COPE advice

The editor has the right to edit, for journal style, grammar, readability etc. The author has the right to disagree and has a right not to publish. They cannot be forced to publish if they disagree with the edits.

Alternatively the authors could be given the opportunity to email back annotations showing areas that need further work. The editor can give a deadline for a decision from the authors. 

If that fails, another option would be to use another senior editor of the journal (independent of the earlier process and with no conflicts of interest) to arbitrate the case, with both sides agreeing to accept the outcome.

The editor may wish to check that the journal guidelines clearly state the procedure about copy, technical, and/or style editing and formatting, so that authors know what to expect. It should also be pointed out that the journal has the right to edit content that is offensive, biased, factually wrong, libellous, etc. These issues sometimes do not come to light until post-acceptance editing; acceptance after peer review does not mean the accepted version is going to be published as it is.

Source 

Case

The editorial occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. The editorial considers this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. The editorial request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the author confirms that they have has read the journal policies prior submitting the manuscript.

COPE advice

Journals need to be unambiguously transparent about article fees. Some authors may be unfamiliar with open access, particularly in specialties where it does not have a strong market share yet. The journal could be more up front about its charges and its business model – for example, on the home page, on the about page, at the top and in bold of the author instructions page.

If the reason authors give is that they changed their mind, authors have the right to withdraw their papers for whatever reason. If the reason given is to do with multiple submission or trying to submit to a journal with an impact factor, or higher impact factor, after improving their paper from peer review, then that would be unethical. This could be a reason if the same author/s are repeatedly submitting papers and withdrawing at payment stage, with a supposed reason of not knowing or not being able to pay. In that case, the institution could be informed.

Source

Case

An author submitted an invited paper to a journal and, after a double anonymous peer review, the decision on the paper was to request ‘major revision’. The author decided not to revise the paper, and therefore effectively withdrew the paper, based on disagreements with the reviewers. 

After withdrawing the article, the author posted it on their personal website and several other websites, along with commentary which named the journal and the editor personally and claimed that the paper was rejected by reviewers. (The reviewers’ recommendations are not provided to authors.) The author also wrote a blog post on the blog site of their university research institute which linked to the personal website. The university blog itself did not name the journal and editor. All websites identified made reference to the paper being ‘rejected’, not ‘major revision’. The author quoted from reviewer responses arguing that they were effectively biased against the subject matter.

The editor had no reason to believe that the reviewers were biased against the subject matter and private comments from reviewers to the editor indicated that this is not the case. The publisher also subsequently asked the author to correct the misinformation about the editorial decision.

The editor was alerted to the various posts by third parties and subsequently twice asked the author to remove references identifying the journal, arguing that the information about the journal decision was incorrect. The author then made public in an update on their blog that they had requested that the publisher reveal the individual reviewer recommendations.

COPE advice

It seems that there is little the journal can do other than request that the authors remove or modify their posts to social media, unless the authors have written something defamatory, in which case legal remedies may be available.

If the criticism is not actionable, perhaps it’s a case of do nothing. The author chose to withdraw their paper and is free to argue their case openly but not with reference to the journal.

If the editor does wish to respond, they could contact the author and explain the journal's policies, assuming the journal has already been clear in its peer review processes and procedures via its website (eg, explaining the model used (double anonymous), role of reviewers/editors and who makes the final decision, what the outcomes could be (accept/revise/reject), appeals/complaints process, and confidentiality). The editor could point out to the author that submitting a paper requires that authors adhere to those policies. Let the authors know their uploaded information is incorrect and should be corrected (also explain what major revision means and that they could have asked the editor to reconsider seemingly unreasonable requests or to extend deadlines). Ask for any content that comes from the review reports to be taken down, explaining that permission is needed to reveal any of the peer review report contents, except the reviewer recommendation as the decision is made by the editor (as has been explained in this case). Escalating to involve the institution is a possible next step (to ask the author to correct the uploaded information and future institution-wide education). 

Source 

Case

Journal was contacted by the sole author of an article that had been peer reviewed and accepted requesting the addition of a second author. The original author claimed that he had forgotten to include the co-author earlier. The journal is concerned about the risk that the new author has not done any work on the article and might get undue credit if their name was added.

COPE advice

The advice would be to put a hold on the publication of the article in question. The editor should then contact the original author for a full explanation of the circumstances and contributions of the "new" author. At the same time, the editor should contact the "new" author and ask for their perspective on the issue. Depending on the responses, the journal could either allow the addition, continue with the investigation (which may include asking the Institution for additional information) or disallow the addition. The editor could also suggest that an acknowledgement may be more appropriate than authorship.

Some journals require each author’s contribution be identified on submission, and this could be a process the journal could put in place so that this issue does not occur in the future. But even if it not the norm for the journal to ask about the contributions of the authors, the extraordinary circumstances dictate that the question should be asked: what did the second author contribute?

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Case

In the acceptance letter and communications with the authors, the editor requested the authors remove portions of their commentary that contained derogatory comments about individuals and the journal that were deemed inappropriate for discourse in a scholarly publication. The authors agreed to do so. Prior to sending the final version of their commentary to the editorial office, the authors posted an earlier version of their paper – with objectionable material – to a preprint site. The authors noted in the preprint what material would be removed prior to publication in the journal. In the published version of their paper, the authors linked to the preprint version. Because there was no standing policy to prohibit such action, and to avoid the appearance of bias given that some of the objectionable material was targeted towards the journal, the editorial team allowed the link to be published.

COPE advice

Some journals have a policy that allows content posted to a preprint server prior to journal submission, but not afterwards. This may be a better solution than developing the policy proposed here.

The advice is to be very cautious in creating policies based on a single event no matter how distressing it may be. The preprint does not contain any confidential or fraudulent information, "just" derogatory comments.

In this case the authors took advantage of the absence of a policy, and violated the spirit both of publication in a reviewed journal and of the purpose of preprint servers. The authors seemed to want to bypass the editorial process to be able to continue to make their derogatory comments. If the derogatory comments are sufficiently objectionable, they should be brought to the attention of the preprint server moderators or preprint server’s oversight board.

Ultimately, the Journal has published a sanitized version of the article and is not responsible for what the authors have posted on the preprint server. 

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Case

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. The reviewer sent us the article downloaded from the conference website highlighting the overlapping paragraphs, which was nearly 80%. 

The journal wrote to the authors asking for an explanation. The authors stated that they had submitted an abstract of their work for participation in the international conference. The abstract was accepted on the condition that they submitted the whole article. The author submitted the article but on the condition that it would not be published in the conference proceedings as the authors wanted to have it published in an indexed journal with an impact factor. Two emails were sent on this subject, copies of which the author provided to the journal.

The authors had no knowledge of the publication of the article as the conference organisers did not inform the authors. After the response from the journal, the authors wrote to the conference organisers asking them to retract the article from their website. The conference organisers are not replying to the emails from the authors.

COPE advice

This would appear to be a case of duplicate submission, and whether the authors knew it or not is irrelevant. It seems the authors did not have a reply from the conference organiser about their initial request for non-publication. If the conference did not reply and they continued with the abstract submission, the conference policy still holds. Perhaps the journal can clarify if the authors received a reply from the conference. If not, they should not retract the paper from the conference proceedings, and it cannot be republished in the journal. 

If the research is so good and the authors admit to naivety about publishing in the conference proceedings, the journal could consider asking the authors to resubmit their paper after paraphrasing and adding additional original content. The conference paper may be preliminary data only and could be developed substantially. Some journals allow this practice after authors have cleared copyright with the conference (or can show they kept the copyright) and reference the first publication. The journal could consider it as a new submission and with full referencing to the prior conference paper.

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Case

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.

The editor asked the complaining author to respond to several questions, including: whether he had contributed to the manuscript in accordance with COPE authorship criteria? Was there a written agreement with the lead investigator and other authors to include him as a coauthor of the article for the support he provided: Was he listed, at some point, as an author of the manuscript, and then removed without his knowledge? The author responded that he believed he fulfilled some of the criteria for authorship. He only had a verbal agreement with the main author and he had never been listed on the paper.

The lead author maintains that the contribution of the complaining author was not significant to warrant authorship.

COPE advice

Authorship disputes are normally very difficult to adjudicate, and COPE recommends that journals do not enter into such disputes. Furthermore, they recommend that journals may not make authorship changes unless the reasons are clear and all of the authors agree to the change. 

The editor should contact the lead author informing them that, unless the parties involved can reach a prompt agreement on this matter themselves, it will be referred to the university, in accordance with the COPE flowchart on adding authors after publication.

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