2007

Search results

  1. Duplicate publication in a non-English language journal

    07-42 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 ...

  2. Incorrect allegations from the head of an institute?

    07-41 After a number of appeals and revisions, and having satisfied ourselves about the results being “too good to be true”, we eventually accepted a paper. In September 2007, we received a letter from the head of the institute (and also ...

  3. Allegation of fraud and insider trading

    07-40 A manuscript was submitted to our journal describing a clinical trial funded by a commercial sponsor with almost all authors being either employees or having financial ties to the company. Although generally favourable, during the ...

  4. Retraction of article from 1994

    07-39 Professor A and professor B has been in a dispute over a certain type of treatment for over 15 years. Professor A has accused professor B of killing a patient while he was (in professor A’s view) doing research on the patient ...

  5. Possible plagiarism case

    07-38 One of the referees of our journal has brought to our attention a potential case of plagiarism. ...

  6. Potential case of plagiarism

    07-37 One of the referees of our journal has brought to our attention a potential case of plagiarism. ...

  7. Ethical dilemma involving religious beliefs

    07-36 The editor and co-editors of a book have a query concerning an ethical dilemma involving possible authors for a book chapter. ...

  8. Author approval for response to mini-reviews

    07-35 We publish mini-reviews of important articles from the medical literature. In order to give the authors of reviewed articles a chance to respond to the review, we have now started to contact the corresponding author once a review ...

  9. A breach of confidentiality?

    07-34 We ask our contributors to send us short mini-reviews of interesting articles they have come across in their regular reading. Most of our members also act as peer-reviewers and come across interesting articles as part of the peer ...

  10. Multiple failure to declare a relevant conflict of interest

    07-33 During peer review of a manuscript submitted to journal Y, one of the referees indicated a belief that at least one of the authors had not declared a relevant conflict of interest (CoI). The article indicated that the authors had ...

  11. Sponsorship, ethical approval and consent for study done as part of an expanded access program

    07-32 We received a paper describing the results of an analysis of pathogen gene sequences from patients who had been given an investigational drug as treatment for their infection. The study had been done in Europe. One reviewer said ...

  12. Researchers give an experimental therapy to patients based on a laboratory study published in our journal

    07-31 We published a paper in the journal which reported on microarray expression profiling of cell lines from a specific type of cancer (not named here, to preserve anonymity). That paper suggested that a particular compound might ...

  13. Possible case of fraud

    07-30 A paper was submitted to us describing an RCT carried out in a Far Eastern hospital. Soon after the manuscript had been sent out for review, one of the reviewers sent a letter alerting us to a “possible case of fraud”. The reviewer ...

  14. Attempt at dual publication

    07-26 In October 2005, our journal commissioned a review on a specific topic from an expert in that field. The commission was accepted, and a submission date set. This was followed up and renegotiated several times over the coming months ...

  15. An investigation into results that were “almost too good to be true”

    07-29 A general medical journal received an RCT from a seldom-published, single-author, in an eastern European country. The results were striking, with an effect size that surpassed that of established medications for this condition, so ...

  16. Inadvertent discovery of salami submission

    07-28 The journal submitting this case to COPE sent a paper [paper 1] to a reviewer who wrote this in the review: “…That apart, this manuscript seems to be another report of the already published **** trial, looking at the data from a ...

  17. Author dispute over internal report

    07-27 Author A was paid to facilitate a meeting and write a meeting report for internal purposes.  He was paid to do this by author C’s company. The report was posted as a PDF on author C’s company website. No authors were listed on the ...

  18. The judgement of Solomon: a case of two strikingly similar papers

    07-25 In February 2007, author A and a colleague submitted a paper (paper A) to our journal, which uses double-blinded peer review. We sent paper A for external review. ...

  19. Is ethics approval required?

    07-24 The journal received a paper on an imaging technique which reported changes in a normal healthy volunteer. No adverse events were experienced. This study demonstrated the feasibility and safety of the imaging studies in a ...

  20. A survey of doctors’ opinions, with no IRB approval or written consent

    07-23 A doctor who trained in country A took the licensing examinations in country B because he wished to work in country B. ...

  21. Unusual consent process in a vulnerable population

    07-22 A clinical trial was conducted in a low income country. The trial involved two schools. At the first school (the control school), children would receive a one-off drug treatment for a common infection (such “mass drug ...

  22. Author trap/fabrication detection

    07-21 This is how I dealt with an author who submitted a fabricated manuscript to my journal. ...

  23. Controversy regarding ownership of a device

    07-20 A paper was submitted which described the outcomes of a clinical trial evaluating a particular device. The device was claimed to represent a placebo version of an active device intervention. The paper was reviewed fairly critically ...

  24. Non-compliance of author with request for information

    07-19 In April 2007, an original scientific article was published on line (ahead of print—it is now published in print, September 2007). In July 2007, the editors received the following request from a scientist who read this article: ...

  25. Signing on behalf of other authors

    07-18 The editors received a manuscript from a Far Eastern country ready to accept. The senior author (who has spent a lot of time in the West) was in the US when the editors asked for final signatures to be sent.  The senior author ...

  26. An appropriate response to concerns of research validity

    07-17 A paper describing a novel technique was submitted. Three out of four external reviewers felt that the results could not be true. The manufacturers of the tool used in the technique provided evidence to support the reviewers’ ...

  27. HIV testing without offering treatment to affected individuals

    07-16 A team of Western researchers carried out a longitudinal study of pregnant nomadic tribeswomen in Africa between 2002 and 2003. They took blood samples during and after pregnancy to test for a specific disease. Those who tested ...

  28. Studies where there is no research ethics committee, or where committees disagree as to the need for approval

    07-15 The editor of this journal, in common with other journals, requires that, where appropriate, studies published should have been approved by the relevant ethics committee. In some cases researchers have reported to the editor that ...

  29. Effect of the British Human Tissue Acts on biological monitoring

    07-14 Biological monitoring is a common procedure in assessing the dose of contaminants from a workplace atmosphere.  It may include measuring a contaminant, such as lead in blood, or a resulting metabolic product, such as mandelic acid ...

  30. Confidentiality and privacy issue

    07-13 A manuscript was submitted from UK authors. The study was a case series of infants with a particular condition. A table in the manuscript contains descriptive data which are critically important for the readers with respect to ...

  31. Authorship issue

    07-12 The editors of a scientific journal were sent a letter of complaint from Drs A and B who noticed that a paper had been published online ahead of the print edition authored by Dr C. ...

  32. Plagiarism case

    07-11 A letter was sent to the editor indicating that three articles (one of them in the editor’s journal) on identical subjects had been published in the same year (2006) by the same authors, accusing the first author of all three ...

  33. Declaration of contributorship

    07-07 An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best articles in medicine, received an evaluation of an article whose authors were based at the same institution as the evaluator. The editor asked ...

  34. Lack of patient consent for a case report, patient confidentiality

    07-10 A case report was submitted to journal X reporting on a child who had been admitted to hospital suffering an injury, which the doctors suspected resulted from a deliberate cigarette burn. This was not proved until the child ...

  35. Duplicate publication?

    07-09 The editors of this journal check all articles against Medline for possible redundant publications. Two very similar articles from an author were retrieved when the name of the author was searched. The titles were very similar, ...

  36. Competing interest issue

    07-08 An online post-publication literature evaluation service, aiming to highlight the best articles in medicine, received an evaluation of an article on which the evaluator was listed as an author on PubMed. The editor queried the ...

  37. An attempt to publish data already published elsewhere

    07-06 A paper was submitted to this journal and sent out to be refereed. The paper had five authors, all from the same institution and department. The bulk of the data were contained in four tables. One of the reviewers pointed out that ...

  38. Definition of plagiarism?

    07-05 In 1997 a book was published (in Italian) on the life of an Italian composer, assembled through analysis of his mummified remains.  Author A contributed a chapter on anthropological analysis (chapter X) and author B co-authored a ...

  39. Prolific authors

    07-04 We have noticed some authors who are publishing at a rate that is exceptionally high. ...

  40. Suspected financial fraud

    07-03 An editorial board member received a complaint of suspected financial fraud in the working of a particular journal and was presented with limited evidence of the same. The editorial board member was invited by the editor to serve ...

  41. Editorial misconduct

    07-01 An associate editor received a letter claiming harassment (from an author from another country) by the editor. The author submitted a manuscript which was repeatedly sent back for changes in format but not rejected. Eventually, the ...

  42. No ethics approval or informed consent?

    07-02 A thesis published by a student was submitted by his guide for publication. One of the journal editors found the research unethical and asked for confirmation of ethics committee approval. The editor received a verbal commitment ...