The rector at author D’s institution contacted the editor of journal A stating that they have found what they evidently consider to be serious misconduct in an article written by author D and the rector requested author D to retract the paper from journal A but author D refused to do so. The institution contacted journal A to say that the institution’s name should not be connected with the article and the institution believes that this misconduct should be known to journal A’s readers immediately. The suspected misconduct by author D was that in figure X each lane was taken from different gels that were combined together, according to the rector.
In the meantime, Dr D has not been communicative, despite Dr F’s correspondence requesting cooperation. Dr F has been instructed not to speak to Dr D in person and has to communicate through e-mail or a third party legal representative. So far, our publications office has not communicated with Dr D—we have only been getting updates through Dr F as the corresponding author.
An author submitted a paper which went through the review process and was rejected. He is now sending abusive emails to me, the editor, and spamming an enormous number of people in his research area and the government (he even tried to contact the royal office) as a protest. He continues to submit his paper (over 20 times so far), changing his author name.
论坛同意,违反保密a serious matter and should be investigated. As the editor confirmed that the instructions to reviewers in his journal stress the confidentiality of reports, it does appear very likely that reviewer A did breach confidentiality. The editor should contact reviewer A and ask for an explanation. It may be that this was an honest mistake and reviewer A thought s/he was being helpful in forwarding the report to reviewer B. However, if the editor has clear evidence that the reviewers behaved inappropriately, he should contact their institution and request an investigation. He should also tell the reviewers that they have been excluded from the journal’s manuscript submission system. The editor should also contact the authors and assure them that he is investigating the case and that the journal takes reviewer confidentiality seriously.
我们有以下问题要问:should we wait for the authors to apply for approval from the ethics committee at this stage or should we reject the manuscript and forward our concerns to the person responsible for research governance at the institution?
建议:
The Forum agreed that the described project was clearly research and not a service audit. It appeared, in fact, to be a prospective randomised trial and so it should have been registered and ethics approval obtained. Retrospective approval would not be appropriate. In addition, all participants should have given their informed consent. The lack of consent suggests a breach of the Helsinki declaration. All agreed that the editor should contact the author’s institution and inform them of the situation and ask them to investigate.
An article was submitted to my journal and was sent for peer review. An editorial board member realised that a number of the references were incorrect: publication dates had been changed to make them more current.
Because I had already accepted that manuscript, I gave the author the opportunity to correct the references and add the student's names who worked on the paper to the acknowledgment section. The managing editor and I had to review and further correct the references following his attempt, and this manuscript will be published.
The publisher is working with their legal department to determine the contents of a letter that will be sent to the author’s dean and will be signed by the editor and a representative from the publisher. The editor also decided not to publish a manuscript by the same author that had previously been accepted.
The advice from the Forum was that the editor should act as if the paper has been published, as it was published online. Hence the first thing the editor must do is reinstate the paper on the website, as taking it down amounts to retraction, and there are no grounds for retraction of this paper. The editor needs to decide if there is anything wrong with the data of the study. What are the objections of Dr M? Are they justified? The editor could suggest to the authors that he publish a correction with the correct list of authors. If all of the authors do not agree, then the editor should contact the institution and ask them to investigate the case and decide whether there are grounds for retraction.
After hearing the opinions of the COPE Forum, we determined to proceed with publication of the paper in question. We first wrote to the one unhappy author, telling him that we were going ahead with publication but asking him if he wanted to have his name removed from the paper. We did not hear back from him and have proceeded with publication of the initial manuscript.