2008

Search results

1. Advice regarding a weird type of content and its authorship

   08-28 Our company publishes clinical pathways. ...

2. Unethical withdrawal of a paper

   08-32 The terms author A and author B will be used to refer to the corresponding and non-corresponding authors, respectively, of the paper in question. The term Editor will be used for Editor A of our journal and Editor B of the other ...

3. Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports

   08-31 Our journal has recently been the subject of an attack of attempted plagiarism by an author from a military hospital in another country. The first evidence of this was alerted to us by one of our reviewers who identified an almost ...

4. Failure to ask permission

   08-30 I am a trainer and author of books on medical writing. It was brought to my attention that a chapter in a German-language book published in Switzerland was based almost entirely on my teaching. The first author is director of a ...

5. A case of duplicate publication?

   08-29 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 ...

6. A severe case of plagiarism?

   08-27 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 ...

7. An article in a high profile journal that potentially misappropriates research published in lower impact journals

   08-26  It has been drawn to our 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 ...

8. Availability of reagents

   08-25 One of our journals has published several articles describing use of a particular cell line X, which belongs to company Y. The authors included employees of company Y. A reader at a university, Dr Z, wished to gain access to cell ...

9. A breach of intellectual property rights?

   08-24 We recently published article A by author group X on our 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 ...

10. A(uthor) vs C(omplainant) authorship dispute

    08-23 A was a researcher in C’s lab for 1 year, during which time they published a joint research paper in a third party journal (journal S). After leaving C’s institute (henceforth called institute X), A published in the journal ...

11. Confidentiality and consent in case reports

    08-22 We would appreciate COPE Forum’s advice with regard to consent and confidentiality in the publication of case histories. ...

12. Author did not see reviews or revisions to the manuscript and did not give approval for publication

    08-21 Approximately 1 year after publication of an article, we 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. ...

13. Plagiarism in a case report

    08-20 I received a phone call from the first Author (A) of a case report published in our journal in 2005, who informed us that he had received a letter from an Author (B) of a research letter which had been published in another journal ...

14. Simultaneous publication

    08-19 About a month after our journal (Journal A) published a paper (Paper X), the journal received emails from readers that Paper X was very similar to a paper (Paper Y) that had just been published by another journal (Journal B). Some ...

15. Duplicate submission

    08-18 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 ...

16. Anonymous peer review – author requesting manuscript file

    08-17 Two manuscripts were submitted, reviewed as sister manuscripts by the journal, and rejected on the basis of negative reviews. ...

17. Publication of papers from industry sponsored symposium

    08-16 Our scientific/medical Society added a Special Symposium to its Annual Meeting Program. The symposium organiser, who is an academic member of the Society, invited seven speakers, all from academic institutions, in addition to ...

18. How many “mistakes” are too many?

    08-15 We published a randomised trial by six authors. Some years later, we received a letter from a researcher who had been looking into the trial in the context of a meta-analysis. She noted “implausibilities of serious concern”, ...

19. Dispute among authors

    08-14 Our journal has received a paper describing a study that originated as more than one trial in more than one country, with collaboration by researchers in another country. The DSMB considered and agreed a proposal to combine the ...

20. Personal remarks within a post-publication literature forum

    08-13 We publish an online service in which faculty members (well reputed clinicians and researchers) select, rate and evaluate influential articles of their choice. Members of the faculty can submit “dissents” to evaluations: dissents ...

21. Clear case of duplicate publication?

    08-11 We received an article at our editorial office in April 2008. One of the referees discovered that a similar article had been published in a surgical journal in 2000. In that article, the authors presented data on the haemodynamics ...

22. Should we always follow the decisions of ethics committees?

    08-12 A paper was submitted to our journal describing a study in which children received general anaesthesia for a minor operation. The authors chose to induce anaesthesia with a mask and 8% sevoflurane inhalation for 8 minutes. The aim ...

23. Community leaders’ consent as a proxy for individual consent

    08-10 A study was submitted that reported the prevalence of an intestinal infection in a tribal community. The authors did not obtain informed individual consent for stool collection from the study participants; instead they obtained ...

24. Developing a procedure to deal with retractions

    08-09 We have recently been alerted to the fact that an article which has been reviewed as part of our service has been retracted. This is the first time this has happened and we are currently developing a guideline on how to deal with ...

25. A member of an author group listed on a paper denies authorship

    08-08 We publish “mini-reviews” of published articles. Our faculty of eminent researchers and clinicians write these evaluations. One of the conditions we insist on from our faculty is that they may not evaluate work on which they are an ...

26. “I was acknowledged but I should be an author”

    08-07 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. ...

27. Fabricated illness: a case that cannot be published under current guidance

    08-06 A preschool boy had a biopsy to confirm a condition from which he subsequently made a complete recovery. Later, he and his younger brother were reported by their female carer to have developed a possible recurrence and this looked ...

28. Retrospective trial registration

    08-05 The authors carried out a randomised single blind controlled trial on the effects of a pain relieving intervention in pregnant women for pelvic girdle pain. Participants were recruited between 2000 and 2002 and the results were ...

29. Consent to publication for case details, and potential for journal violation of patient anonymity

    08-04 We received a paper reporting on the outcomes of treatment of an individual with obsessive–compulsive disorder and body dysmorphic disorder, which seemed not to respond to standard treatment. Following ethical review and approval, ...

30. Randomisation and ethics of pilot trials

    08-03 We received a paper with potentially important results. After review and revision, we accepted the paper. On further reflection, and asking more of the authors, we became concerned. It is an RCT and the only protocol available was ...

31. Short case reports without formal consent

    08-02 A manuscript was submitted about prenatal diagnosis of a specific cardiac disease. Short case reports of four babies who died were included. Although there are no names, we believe that there are sufficient details about the ...

32. Plagiarism in a systematic review

    08-01 The editors received an unsolicited systematic review and the paper was assessed for suitability for peer review, as is the usual procedure for this journal. The editor who assessed the manuscript noticed similarities with a ...