Dr X repeatedly emailed her supervisor every 2 months or so, but at some point, the supervisor stopped responding to emails, or replied very briefly, only saying that the senior scientist had resigned. Dr X has been hired in a permanent research position. To be tenured, Dr X needs to publish and show that her post-doctoral work was accepted for publication.
The Forum questioned why is it up to the supervisor to submit the paper and not Dr X? Dr X should be entitled to go ahead and submit the work.
论坛还质疑如果主管符合作者吗？他应该被列为贡献者吗？
The institution needs to take a role in resolving this issue. If permission from the university is needed, Dr X could consider going above the supervisor, to his supervisor—diplomatically escalating the issue, but in a non-aggressive way.
作者Tim Albert, trainer in medical writing, Elizabeth Wager, freelance writer and trainer, on behalf of COPE Council 版本12003 如何引用 阿尔伯特T和瓦格E代表议会。如何处理作者争议：新研究者指南。版本1。2003年9月。https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.1
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A case series of 89 patients with a relatively rare condition was accepted for publication by the journal following due process through the peer-review system. The paper was published online within days of being accepted. A few days later the editor of the journal received an email from a professor (Professor X) from the same country from which the paper was submitted to say that one of the cases was "his case" and that he wanted the case and the clinical photograph of his patient to be withdrawn from the paper; alternatively, he requested being made a coauthor on the paper. The editor circulated the letter from Professor X to the publisher, the editor-elect and the editorial office. It was decided that the editor should contact the corresponding author to ask them to consider this approach and to give their response. The letter to the corresponding author included the name of the professor who had written, and the exact details of the complaint and the two possible outcomes he was requesting (withdrawal of his case or his inclusion as a coauthor). The editor went on to say "If the patient is indeed Professor X's and he (Professor X) meets the authorship criteria (as per the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJEhttp://www.icmje.org/)) we can still, if all coauthors agree, add him as a coauthor. If he does not meet the authorship criteria then it would be possible to offer acknowledgement."
The editor also e-mailed the publisher to request that the paper "be pulled" until the issue was sorted. The publisher responded by saying that it was not possible to simply "pull" the paper and that it would need to remain as online only.
A few days later the first author replied to the editor of the journal as follows: "Actually, Professor X provided the picture and clinical data regarding this patient and I should have included him as coauthor. It was my mistake." This explanation was accepted by the editor and a revised version of the manuscript and authorship consent was submitted. (Comment: The journal does not require coauthors of papers to state explicitly what they have done to merit inclusion as a coauthor.) 很难相信，X教授会满足ICMJE的作者标准的基础上提供给杂志的信息。尽管如此，他和所有合著者签署了新的作者声明表和版权转让。 Questions for the COPE Forum （1） 《华尔街日报》的回应和程序是否适合这一问题？ (2)If not, how might the journal and editorial team have behaved differently? （3） COPE论坛是否建议该杂志在将问题转交给论文作者之前，尝试收集更多与遗漏作者对手稿的贡献有关的信息？
Advice:
The Forum agreed this was a difficult case, and in such circumstances it is not always easy to know what to do. A few members of the Forum would have handled the situation differently and the majority of the Forum agreed that Professor X did not qualify for authorship.
One view was that this was a case of gift authorship. Some argued that Professor X only partially fulfilled condition (1) of the ICMJE criteria and hence should not have been listed as an author. People who contribute patients or data do not automatically qualify as authors. In this case, perhaps the person could have been put in the acknowledgement section for his contribution of the specific patient data rather than included as an author. The editor should have stood firm and refused to allow Professor X’s inclusion as an author. This also raises the question of how many of the other authors on this paper contributed substantially?
编辑指出,《华尔街日报》不需要coauthors of papers to state explicitly what they have done to merit inclusion as a coauthor. The Forum suggested that the journal might like to revise this policy and in future ask authors to state their exact contributions. 论坛指出，这一案件突出了作者和贡献者的作用这一整个问题。编辑，作者和资助者经常与这些问题斗争，他们正在积极讨论的论坛，如http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/attribution\u研讨会
Follow up:
The editor submitted the case more as a learning point about what to do to avoid this happening in the future. He is grateful for the advice of the Forum.
The editor could also write an editorial on authorship policies, referring to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME) guidelines. For the future, the editor might consider altering the journal’s instructions to authors stating that the names and contact details of all authors (not just the corresponding author) should be provided to the journal on submission of a paper. The editor could also consider publishing the list of contributors, detailing what contribution each author made to the paper.
（1）An author of a recent submission has published over 100 articles since January 2005; he had published fewer than 50 in the preceding 5 years. This is quite a sudden increase. On average, he published 1 article every 8 days in 2005, and in 2006 this increased to 1 every 4 days. The author is on the board of his institute, and is a department head.
It has been shown that some infamous cases of fraud were by prolific authors ("High annual publication rates had characterised many of the international research misconduct cases, which had begun to come to light in the mid-1970s"http://www.bmj.com/
Is our suspicion of these authors reasonable, and at what levels do other editors become concerned about whether or not an author is truly deserving of authorship?
(2)
When should we, as journal editors, raise concerns about overly prolific authors to institutions?
We had no concerns about the data being presented, and the author had indeed become department chair and a boardmember of the institute. We did not reject the manuscript, but did mention to our prolific author that we were surprised to see so many submissions and publications, given the work involved in the research and write-up of each article to actually qualify as author (as specified by our instructions for authors).
A third co-author explained that his role was “philosophical” rather than clinical. To his knowledge the study was conducted personally by Dr X, probably in his own country, and he only helped him with discussions and text revisions.
We have withdrawn the review until we can find out if the data are real. I have written to the National Committee on Ethics in Research in the author’s country but have had no reply. An international expert on the statistical detection of fraud is currently looking at the papers. He has some concerns but his investigation is ongoing.
X是一个多产的博士研究员约16的嗨s own first authored papers cited in his clinical trial reports. It appears that many doctors suspect misconduct but none has been prepared to voice their concerns or to take any action.
As there has been no useful response from the other journal editors who published other papers by this author, it seems there is no point in pursuing this line of enquiry. However, the editorial procedures in these journals must be criticised as the editors strongly suspected that the data were fabricated but still went ahead and published the papers. COPE could take some action if they were members, but they are not.
Further update This case has been the subject of an article and an editorial in the BMJ. The articles outline the details of the case and consider the wider implications of the case, a summary of which is given here:
We are left with serious doubt about important studies but with no way of determining with confidence whether the results are fabricated or real. The main author is dead. There is no institution to investigate. The implications for patients are serious. They are being treated on the basis of potentially unreliable evidence. It is plausible that this drug in high doses may worsen rather than alleviate the condition. Shortly after the withdrawal of the review, the journal was contacted by US researchers preparing guidelines for the management of this condition and by a UK group asking about the outcome of our investigation because the authors’ results were about to be incorporated into guidelines.