2004

Search results

  1. Misunderstood requirements for authorship

    04-39 Dr X submitted a paper to a journal that was assigned by a rather hung-over editorial assistant to an associate editor who was a co-author on the paper. Realising the mistake, she emailed the associate editor to reassign the paper. ...

  2. Consent and ethics approval questioned after acceptance

    04-38 In a paper detailing a physiological study of healthy human volunteers the authors stated that ethics committee approval had been granted and that the participants had given informed consent. After peer review the paper was revised ...

  3. Ethical approval and fabrication of results

    04-37 A group of authors, based in private practice, submitted three manuscripts to Journal A and one to Journal B. All the manuscripts described the application and effectiveness of a spinal manipulation technique. ...

  4. Using annual reviews to massage the impact factor

    04-36 The editor in chief of Journal A is also on the editorial board of Journal B. Journal B publishes “annual reviews” that purport to describe recent advances in the field, but only do this by discussing and citing their own content. ...

  5. Massaging the impact factor

    04-35 The editor in chief of a journal started insisting that authors include references from the journal in their articles. S/he provided examples of acceptance letters from several other journals in the field, which insist that their ...

  6. Competing interest

    04-34 An editorial board member of a journal submitted an unsolicited review article on a drug. The editor said the journal would consider the article, but suspected that the article had been commissioned or even written by a drugs ...

  7. Russian scientific misconduct

    04-33 A letter was sent to an editor, claiming that scientific misconduct had taken place in Russia. The editor did not want to ignore the issue, which was not related to submitted papers and could not be published as a letter. But s/he ...

  8. Whose responsibility is duplicate submission?

    04-32 Ten days after receiving an article for consideration, a group of editors received an email from the publisher informing them that the particular author in question had recently submitted nine articles to their journals, eight of ...

  9. Interactive case report of a patient with ongoing health problems

    04-31 The case of a patient with unresolved upper abdominal pain and weight loss was written up and submitted by her family doctor to a journal that publishes interactive case reports. The intention was to present it as an unfolding ...

  10. Redundant publication

    04-29 A complaint of redundant publication was made by a reader, who claimed that a second paper had been published in the journal, after the first had already been published elsewhere. No permission letter was obtained by the author of ...

  11. Single patient trials and lack of data

    04-28 The editor received a paper describing two single patient trials. Both peer reviewers recommended publication, although each of them pointed out the absence of real data. It was an unusual case where parents with small children ...

  12. Case report and consent

    04-27 A journal provisionally accepted a case report. When requested, the authors could not identify patients to obtain their signed consent. The authors offered to anonymise the data, but the journal was inclined to decline. - What ...

  13. Palestinian refugee conditions

    04-26 A journal received a simple, cross-sectional survey of Palestinian refugees. The author was a Palestinian, employed by a charity and undertaking research based at a university overseas. The study contained new data and within the ...

  14. Interpretation of regulations: when is a waiver of authorisation acceptable?

    04-25 Some authors tested the effect of a food on the menstrual cycle. The manuscript included patient identifiable information, but the authors did not provide formal confirmation that the patients consented to publication of the study. ...

  15. Dispute over plagiarism

    04-24 A review article, written by two authors, was spontaneously submitted to Journal X and accepted for publication after favourable comments from the referees. A few weeks later, and before the paper had been published, Author A ...

  16. Plagiarism in a review article

    04-23 A review article was spontaneously submitted and sent out to three peer reviewers, which is standard practice for the journal. One of these reviewers expressed “serious concerns” about the paper. In a telephone conversation, s/he ...

  17. Online trial of a new diagnostic tool

    04-22 A paper was submitted that attempted to evaluate a new tool for diagnosing an acute symptom. This symptom is one that could be linked with various medical conditions—some causing little harm and some life threatening. The ...

  18. The case of a physician in private practice offering an experimental intervention

    04-21 A physician in private practice wrote to our journal asking if we were interested in a paper discussing his experience of offering a novel intravenous therapy to his patients. He hoped we wouldn’t discriminate against him for ...

  19. Anonymous information

    04-20 We have received an allegation from an anonymous phone caller that an author has been wrongly omitted from a Viewpoint published 2 years ago. The claim was made that the author's contribution was suppressed by the institution. ...

  20. Possible malpractice revealed in a case report

    04-19 We received a case report describing the diagnosis and treatment of a middle-aged woman who presented to a gastroenterology service in England with weight loss and a right iliac fossa mass. The authors did a barium swallow, ...

  21. Lack of ethics committee approval?

    04-18 An editor received a paper and requested details of ethical approval from the authors. The authors replied that they had approached the ethics committee about carrying out a more extensive study than the one submitted, for which ...

  22. Obtaining consent for a study of people with severe learning disabilities

    04-17 A paper was submitted which reported a study of observing people with severe learning disabilities and their interactions with staff on a locked hospital ward. The journal was keen to consider the paper further, but had concerns ...

  23. Duplicate submission

    04-16 The authors submitted a paper to journal A on genetic analysis of a potentially pathogenic organism isolated from children, analysed by school attended. Six days later, the same authors submitted a paper to journal B on genetic ...

  24. Attempt at multiple plagiarism

    04-15 In January 2004 a submission was made to Journal A from a laboratory in a different country. In April 2004 it was bought to the editor’s attention that the manuscript was a verbatim copy of a paper published in 2003 in another ...

  25. Potentially unethical publication

    04-14 A new Editor was appointed to a society journal in a minority medical specialty. An officer of the society immediately handed him an anonymous letter from a reader of the journal complaining that an article recently published was ...

  26. Undeclared competing interests

    04-13 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 ...

  27. Research on volunteers without informed consent or ethics committee approval

    04-12 An experiment on a volunteer in hospital was written up. The volunteer was an asthmatic who was stable at the time and given a combination of intravenous magnesium sulphate and salbutamol to observe the pharmacological effects. The ...

  28. Retraction of false authorship

    04-11 Dr X asked for a statement to be published to the effect that the letter he had published in the journal with two co-authors was not based on any work that he had done, but on that of his colleagues. The editor asked the other two ...

  29. Dispute between authors and a reviewer

    04-10 A concise report on a rare disease was submitted and sent out to an internationally renowned reviewer in the field. He felt that some of the data had been obtained in his unit, and this had not been acknowledged by the authors. The ...

  30. Multiple submissions of a paper

    04-09 A paper suggested that a cluster of symptoms, signs, and tests could be combined to diagnose pneumonia in general practice. The paper was rejected after being read by two editors, because it was preliminary and had not been ...

  31. Undeclared conflict of interest

    04-08 Several years after a case series was published, a journalist with serious allegations of research misconduct contacted the editor. These allegations were that: - Ethics approval had not been obtained, contrary to a statement in ...

  32. CV study: was ethics approval and consent required?

    04-07 A submitted paper detailing the negative experiences of overseas doctors applying for a training post in a district general hospital was poorly presented and scientifically weak, but on a topic of great interest and importance. ...

  33. Attempts to draw attention to potential duplicate publication

    04-06 A medical student brought a case of duplicate publication in two journals in the same specialty to the attention of an editor of a third journal. The article in Journal A was published in 1997 and the article in Journal B was ...

  34. Dual publication and attempted retraction by the author

    04-05 An author who published an article in Journal A at the end of the year wrote to advise that it would have to be retracted on the grounds that his PhD tutor, Professor X, had already submitted a similar manuscript more than a year ...

  35. Wholesale plagiarism

    04-04 A review article was submitted by three authors from three separate institutions to Journal A. It was sent out to two referees. One of the referees noticed an apparent similarity with a review published a year earlier in Journal B, ...

  36. The disappearing authors

    04-03 Some time after a single authored research article was published a journal received a letter pointing out that the same article had been rejected by another journal because of unresolved authorship and acknowledgement issues. At ...

  37. Duplicate publication in a foreign language

    04-01 A published article was subsequently republished in a foreign language journal, with exactly the same results and text. Just a few extra references were added. The senior author had written to apologise for the foreign language ...

  38. An accusation of fraud in a rejected paper

    04-02 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 ...