Post-publication discussions and corrections

In 1990 a case report was published in which it was alleged that the use of a particular endotracheal tube had led to tracheal damage, requiring the child to have a tracheostomy and a tracheal reconstruction. This paper was from a specialist surgical unit, and a letter was subsequently received from the paediatricians who had cared for the baby at the referring hospital before and after the transfer to the surgical unit.

A paper concerning the prevention of coronary disease in primary care was received. This examined the practical consequences of following some recent national recommendations and suggested that the recommendations were unrealistic. A few weeks later another paper from the same authors was submitted, which the editor who first read it thought was probably an inadvertent duplicate submission of the same paper. On comparing the two papers, however, they were not identical.

The possibility of dual publication of two papers with almost identical titles and an identical list of authors emerged in the course of appointing a short-listing panel for an NHS award. The potential duplication was spotted in the publications list of an applicant for the award, who was not the first author on either paper. The editor of Journal A, in which one of the papers was in press, was a member of the awards short-listing panel.

论文从三个作者在一个有争议的话题s was published. All three authors completed forms to say that they did not have competing interests. This was stated at the end of the paper. A reader subsequently contacted the journal to say that she had clear evidence that one of the authors did have competing interests. He had, she said, been involved in legal cases and received substantial payments for his work. The article related to these legal cases.

A study purported to have been stimulated by a systematic review that had already been published in the journal. The new study included 15 patients who had been treated in one arm of a study and 15 who had been treated in another arm. The peer reviewers noticed that the original systematic review included 31 patients from the same authors. The editor contacted the authors asking them to make clear whether this was a new study or a presentation of existing data.

A group of researchers from departments of psychology and public health submitted a paper based on a survey that had been commissioned by the NHS Executive. The paper was received at Journal A on 14 May 1998 and a decision to offer publication of a revised version was made on 25 June 1998. Over a year elapsed between this offer and the resubmission of a revised version of the paper due to illness and a change of job, on the part of the corresponding author.

An editorial that was very close to a paper that had already been published in another journal was submitted for publication. The authors did not make clear that the editorial was essentially the same as the one already published, but this was discovered during the peer review process. Nevertheless, the journal went ahead and published the editorial without disclosing that it was very similar to the one that had already been published. Copyright was not obtained from the author.

Three papers concerning one hospital problem had been submitted to three different journals. Before publication the three editors of the journals became aware of the three different papers and the substantial overlap between them. The three editors communicated with each other and realised that they had four concerns: 1. There was very considerable overlap among the three papers. There didn’t seem to be any justification for publishing three papers rather than one or two. 2.

At a recent editorial board meeting it was suggested that in some disciplines straddling several specialties, transparent simultaneous publication might be necessary. It was suggested that this applies to sexually transmitted infections, and different readers may not have access to each other’s journals.

A case report was submitted for consideration and, following favourable review, was accepted for publication by Journal A. All three authors signed the copyright release form, but about six weeks later a request not to publish the article was received by e-mail, which was attributed to a “misunderstanding and argument between two of the authors.” The editor wrote to all three authors expressing concern, but after six weeks none of them had responded.