同行评审过程

在2016年，我们在我们的期刊中分组出版的稿件X.2017年初，B组提交了对已发布的稿件批评的评论。在同行评审后，按照日记的那些活动政策，评论被驳回了进一步的考虑。该政策允许原始文章的作者成为评论的同行评审员之一。

The lead author of group A, acting as one of the three referees for the comment, indicated in their confidential comments to the editor that group A would be submitting a correction to address issues arising from the comment. Group A duly submitted and published a correction to manuscript X. Soon after, the journal was contacted by a legal representative of group B to express their concern over the publication of the correction by group A. The representative indicated a concern that the unpublished comment submitted to the journal contributed in part to the submission and publication of the correction. Group B researchers considered that the submission of their comment under the journal’s then active comment/reply policy had allowed the authors of the correction to prepare their manuscript using material that they had been privy to only via their involvement in the peer review of the comment, and that this fact had not been acknowledged in the correction.

B组要求期刊撤回修正并重新打开对评论的同行审查。As the journal’s management team considered that the first request would leave an error in the scientific record uncorrected and the second request was unlikely to result in a change of outcome, the journal instead investigated the matter raised by the representative Group B, with the goal of preparing a new correction for publication to take into account the facts of the matter following the investigation.

The investigation identified an error on the part of the administrative team that contributed to this situation; namely, failing to ensure the authors of the correction provided due acknowledgement of the provenance of the correction. As part of the investigation, the journal contacted group A for their input. The authors agreed they should have included an acknowledgement, but not having seen similar acknowledgements on other corrections published by the journal declined to include one in their correction. However, group A also noted that they had exchanged email correspondence with group B, prior to the submission of the comment, about some of the matters subsequently included in the comment. Group A have been at pains to stress that their correction was not primarily prompted by the comment.

The journal has engaged with both parties to find a mutually agreed statement on the chain of events that contributed to the publication of the correction, with a view to republishing the correction to clarify both the scientific record and the sequence of events. This has resulted in a great deal of time and effort being expended on several draft statements prepared by the journal over the previous 14 months.

由于此事保留在两个组之间没有得到解决，该杂志的团队已经选择在所有发布什么。这些群体已被告知这一点，如果双方能够在自己之间同意某种形式的话，期刊仍然是发表声明。

尽管如此，出版商定期审查其工作实践和编辑政策，这一案件有助于出版商制定的政策的变更，以减少未来事件和结果序列的可能性。在这种情况下考虑到我们的经验，并旨在解决潜在的未来对提交意见的利益冲突，通过了新的评论/答复政策。在后视，以前的评论/回复政策出现问题，原因有很多原因，包括潜在的利益冲突，使原文作者参与对提交的评论的同行审查。

应对论坛的问题
• Given the apparent impossibility of the two parties agreeing a form of words, and the threats of legal action and publishing their own version elsewhere, is the journal justified in choosing NOT to publish anything? Would it be better to publish the journal’s view anyway and accept the potential risks?
•在识别出版商的原始评论/回复政策的同时，论坛是否有关于出版商/期刊如何或者将来应对类似争议的任何建议？该政策已被修改，以减少利益冲突的可能性。
• How far should the publisher go in trying to resolve disputes between groups (especially where, as in this case, only one party has actually published in the journal)?