A manuscript was submitted to our journal. After review we asked for revision. At this time we sent a formatting checklist which includes criteria for authorship. Two authors were removed in the resubmission. Eventually the manuscript was published.
At this time one of the formerly included authors contacted us, asking why they were no longer cited. We asked the submitting author, who explained that the complainant should never have been listed as an author by our definition (which matches the ICMJE criteria), but should have been acknowledged. We are currently in communication with the complainant over the exact nature of their involvement with the manuscript.
在这种情况下,讨论submitting author revealed what may be institutionalised authorship problems at their university.
“According to the rules of the university, PhD students have one supervisor and several advisors. They have to publish at least one article with each advisor (whether the advisors help the students or not). Students do not choose their advisors and the university managers directly propose them to the students, so some of the advisors could not or do not want to help the students.
Would COPE read this situation as a university in need of education, in addition to individuals in need of education? Would COPE recommend contacting the editor of the journal publishing the author's previous article and explaining this situation?
Advice:
When the paper was re-submitted excluding the names of two authors, the journal should have sought agreement from these two before publication. Although not done in this case, the editor said that he would seek written consent from excluded authors in the future. Also, the excluded authors should have been acknowledged on the paper. The discussion that followed centred on the issue of gift authorship. The university is in need of education, and the editor should write not only to the authors’ departments but also to the faculty heads explaining the details of this case and emphasising the fact that gift authorship is an unacceptable practice.
Follow up:
We have written to the institution involved but have heard nothing back. We will try some other names at the institution. We have since revised our internal guidelines to require confirmation from all authors every time an author is added or removed from a paper. Trail has now gone cold now (1 December 2006).
In 2003 a paper was published in a specialist surgical journal following proper peer review. The paper summarised the experience of a group of clinicians concerned in treating malignancy in the Head and Neck using a novel method of therapy - and was a case series of 25 patients. The paper was not considered to be one of high priority but was published because of the paucity of information concerning this method of treatment in the literature. The principal author had 3 co-authors all of whom signed the relevant documentation stating that they had played a substantial part in the preparation of the manuscript and stating that there were no conflicts of interest to be declared. Copyright, following publication, was ascribed to the publishing journal.
2005年5月,权威杂志的编辑the United States sent an e-mail to the current editor in this country stating that he had been in receipt of a manuscript, submitted electronically, which appeared to be an attempt at duplicate publication. He requested that a pdf file of the original article was sent to him and, in due course, confirmed that the new manuscript that he had received was a re-write of the already published paper with the addition of one extra case. The original paper was not cited in the new manuscript. The co-authors had mostly changed but the senior author and one co-author were common to both papers. Once again a covering letter had been received alleging that a substantial original input had been made by all the authors and stating that there were no conflicts of interest outstanding.
The American editor has now written to the senior author of the received manuscript requesting an explanation for this attempt at duplicate publication. To date no response has been received. He, together with other senior editors in the United States, has already published an editorial stating that plagiarism or proven duplicate publication would be punished by denying the individuals concerned access to publishing rights in the major American journals. No tariff was laid out in this editorial and the exact time for which those proven of fraud or fraudulent behaviour would be denied publication in the United States was not proscribed.
The situation is further complicated since the editor in this country is a professional colleague of the senior author who is alleged to have attempted this duplicity. In addition to this the senior author has already, in the past, been suspended from clinical practice for a period of four months while an untoward clinical incident was investigated and a Royal College of Surgeons inquiry was instituted.
However I would be grateful if advice could be given to us concerning the appropriateness of such action and also if some insight could be offered as to whether alternative action might prove preferable in this instance.
Advice:
The committee thought that this was almost tantamount to blacklisting. COPE has never suggested blacklisting as a method. The journal should decide if there should be a notice of duplicate publication and then notify the authors.
The committee thought that it is not right to ban authors, blacklists raise a myriad of legal difficulties and also have a lack of due process. A better route is to contact the institution.
Follow up:
At the subsequent committee meeting in December 2005, the previous advice from COPE regarding the “blacklisting” of authors who attempt duplicate publication—namely, that such action could have serious legal implications and publishers and editors should be very cautious of going down this route—was re-emphasised by the chair. Any attempt to deny authors access to journals might put the publishers of those journals at risk of legal action. Faced with this problem of duplication publication, another less risky route might be for editors to develop a “grey list” of those authors who may have transgressed in this regard, in order that special attention may be paid to articles they submit.
Write to all the authors separately and ask for an explanation.
Write to the authors’ institutions.
Inform the advisory board.
Retract the article.
检查所有作者的文章。
Remove the offenders from the editorial board.
Follow up:
The paper was retracted by the authors, who gave all sorts of explanations, from trying to get around the allegations, to saying they shouldn’t have been listed as authors. The editor wrote an editorial on the paper, which attracted considerable media coverage. Members of the editorial board were removed and the institutions involved took the matter very seriously.
The corresponding author had signed the submission letter on the other authors’ behalf. In view of the large numbers of co-authors involved, the editor considered it impractical to write to them all, but contacted the editors of three other journals where there was evidence of duplicate publication. One editor said that his journal was already refusing to consider any more work from the corresponding author. The other two editors indicated that they would take up the cases of duplication publication with the corresponding author. One of the three journals was in the process of publishing an apology, along with a fourth journal, concerning a separate case of duplication from this group. The corresponding author had also been contacted and indicated that the cases of duplicate publication emanating from his group could have been due to insufficient care being exercised by some of his staff. After consulting the journal’s editorial board the editor decided not to consider any further manuscripts from this group because they could not be confident that the work would be original.