日报》发表了一篇综述。大约一年左ater, the author of a paper published in 1997 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.
A case report was submitted in which the authors described a patient who had a poor outcome, and where many mistakes had been made during treatment. The authors of the paper were from a tertiary care centre. The poor practice had happened in a secondary care centre. One of the reviewers of the paper thought that the level of practice was so poor that action should be taken. The other reviewer thought the circumstances were not bad enough to report. But the paper had already been rejected. The authors were asked whether they should do more, but should the editors do more?
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. The publisher could only account for the first two and therefore contacted the editors for clarification. 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.
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.
An author wrote us a letter for publication on the importance of doing research on a long established drug. He did not declare any competing interest, but we were later informed that he was conducting a trial of the drug funded by a pharmaceutical company. We approached him and asked him to declare his competing interest. Have we done the right thing? Should we do more than simply ask him to declare his competing interest and publish that declaration the journal?