- Case
Inadvertent duplicate publication of the same article a month apart in the same journal
This was an unfortunate situation where several checks and balances already in place at the journal failed during the peer review and production process leading to inadvertent duplication of a manuscript. Additionally, there were technical glitches, and the duplication of manuscript was missed by the authors, editors and journal staff as well. The duplicate articles were published a month apart… - CaseOn-going
Citation manipulation in a conference proceeding
We have received a communication from the conference organiser and conference committee of a conference proceeding published by us. They initially wrote to us advising that members of the teaching staff at their university manipulated the references of 68+ papers by deleting references/adding references which had nothing to do with the research. The organiser advised that the university… - CaseCase Closed
Experiment reported in a submitted manuscript was not carried out by the author
We have recently received an Original study in which the authors stated that all the relevant experimental studies were done by a biotechnology company (via a Contract Research Organisation), which had provided analysis services for the relevant data. In the initial review, when we checked the relevant experimental issues with the author, we found that the author could not provide the sources o… - Case
Handling an undisclosed conflict of interest which is attracting controversy
In summer 2023, an author informed the journal that they had unintentionally neglected to declare a conflict of interest on all of the five articles that they had published in the journal between 2019 and 2022. They had been made aware of this on social media, in the context of a widespread movement to discredit members of an emerging healthcare profession that they represent. They stated that… - Case
Handling contentious authorship disputes
Recently we published an article online. A scholar wrote to us saying that their name is not included in the author list but that they had made contributions to the article. They therefore requested us to add their name to the author list. They are currently mentioned only in the Acknowledgements section of the article. We contacted the corresponding author of the article, who insisted t… - Case
Is it possible for an article to have two corresponding authors?
Is it possible for a submission to have two corresponding authors (as the authors are requesting)? … Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individua… - Case
Late addition of co-authors
An article was submitted to our journal with two authors listed. Proofs were approved with these two authors listed. However, two months after publication the corresponding author claimed that the article had actually been submitted on the website with six authors. The journal considers the final list of authors to be those listed on the title page at the first submission step. The autho… - Case
How to exclude AI-generated articles
Recently, we discovered a potential problem with the use of AI-generated articles. We would like your advice on formulating a process to screen for AI-generated submissions. In the first review of an article, our Editor-in-Chief (EiC) found that the author of the manuscript had no prior history of publication, and was connected with an AI website (found during an internet search). The ar… - CaseOn-going
Authors request withdrawal of a 19-year old article
We have been approached by the authors of an article published about 19 years ago stating that they have found an error in a mathematical proof in their research. As a result, although the main theorem proposed in the paper should still be true, they would need to completely revise the text and intend in the longer run to find a new proof. They recognise that the paper as published cannot stand… - CaseOn-going
Correction, retraction, or expression of concern?
Recently, we received a review report from PubMedCentral for the indexing application of one of our journals. Reviewers pointed out several shortcomings of particular articles below: 1. Discussions that did not thoroughly address limitations, and conclusions that were over-stated and/or not supported by the results. 2. Methods that were not described clearly and in sufficient deta… - CaseOn-going
Stolen ownership of a rare case
A case report was published in our journal after being approved by a peer reviewer and subjected to a technical review. The first author was a post-graduate trainee attached to the department of pathology of a prestigious national institute. A month later we received an email from a resident working at a specialist department of another institute claiming that the patient belonged to them and a… - CaseCase Closed
Publishing corrections for articles in inactive journals
Two articles published in 2006 and 2008 (by different author groups) had image integrity concerns that have been raised to the publisher. The journal verified independently that these image duplication concerns are valid and reached out to the corresponding authors first and upon not receiving a response subsequently sent emails to all authors multiple times. But due to the age of the pa… - CaseCase Closed
Author contacts editor-in-chief using personal phone number
We have received in the past several bribe attempts from authors from an Asian country trying to publish articles in our journal, which have always arrived by email. However, the editor-in-chief of our journal recently received a WhatsApp message on his personal phone number from an author of that same Asian country. The same message was also sent by email to the official email address of the j… - CaseOn-going
Conflicts of interest between authors and editors
Recently, we have received a manuscript submitted by our Editor in Chief (EiC), with almost all of the Editorial Board Members and some of our authors of previous submissions as co-authors. In dealing with this we noticed that some of our previous published articles currently have conflicts of interest between the authors and the Academic Editor (AE). Our peer review policy states that t… - CaseOn-going
Retracting a 'Just Accepted' article
We are nearing the completion of an investigation into an alleged fraudulent special issue of one of our journals. Someone impersonated legitimate Special Issue editors and invited papers from legitimate authors in the community. We discovered this alleged fraud while reaching out to the people who were listed as the Special Issue editors only to find out from them that they had nothing to do w… - CaseOn-going
Same cohort - same blood samples - multiple tests
This is a hypothetical situation based on a real-life experience. A set of authors recruited the same patient cohort, collected data with two questionnaires, took one blood sample, but tests were done by two research students for two pathogens, and the results were presented separately in two theses. Subsequently, they sent different papers to two journals. No plagiarism has been identif… - CaseOn-going
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
An article published in a journal in 2023 appears to have been plagiarised in a possible predatory journal but the publishers are unable to get a response from the predatory journal or affiliated Institute. The article (Article A) was submitted to Journal X in 2022 and published early in 2023. The authors reached out to the Journal after finding that another article dated from 2021 (Art… - CaseCase Closed
Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers
What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is… - CaseOn-going
Request for removal from author list for reasons of religious belief
We have been contacted by an author of a published article who has requested to be removed from the author list. The author is third in the author list and is neither a lead author nor a corresponding author. The CRediT statement for the article reports that the author’s contribution to the work included investigation, validation, formal analysis and data curation. The author says that t… - CaseCase Closed
Suspicion that signed informed consent forms are forged
A research paper was submitted to our journal and underwent several rounds of peer review and editorial curation. We were on the point of acceptance when we realised there were some images that were submitted along with the paper where patients were perfectly identifiable but we did not have the signed informed consent forms. We therefore asked the authors for the consent forms (corresponding t…