The editors of a scientific journal were sent a letter of complaint from Drs A and B who noticed that a paper had been published online ahead of the print edition authored by Dr C.
(a) The editors wrote to Drs A, B and C and asked first that all three liaise with each other to see if they could come to a consensual agreement about authorship. No agreement was reached.
The editors of the journal told the authors that they would adopt the following procedures in resolving this issue:
(1) Given the guidelines above, the editors hoped that the authors might reach an agreement among themselves as to the appropriateness of co-authorship for Drs A and B. Such an agreement would be the best option for resolution. The authors were given a deadline of two weeks to resolve their disagreement on their own, and to inform the journal of the agreement reached.
(3) The authors were told that if they could not reach agreement among themselves, and did not accept the alternative proposal, the journal reserves the right to make the determination itself, from the input provided in the authors’ letters and after discussion with Dr D. The authors were told that the journal would proceed with this third option if any one of the authors informs the journal that neither option 1 nor option 2 is acceptable, or if a response was not received within two weeks.
The issue is ongoing. The editors would be interested in COPE’s view on this dispute and the suggested remedial actions. The editors would be interested to know COPE’s advice in relation to this dispute and how COPE would have attempted to resolve the issue.
信被送到编辑表明three articles (one of them in the editor’s journal) on identical subjects had been published in the same year (2006) by the same authors, accusing the first author of all three articles of stealing data from and plagiarising a previously published article from the academic institution where the first author previously worked. The letter, sent by a senior academic and former supervisor of the first author, said that the data had been published without his permission or acknowledgement and he requested that the author be contacted and he and his colleagues punished for their unethical behaviour.
Soon after, the same allegedly victimised head of department sent a second letter to the same editor saying that he was planning on contacting the author’s university and Ministry of Health, informing them of this matter, and also requesting that these papers be immediately retracted from the journal, with an explanation published. Moreover, he stated that he would be submitting a letter to the editor which he hoped would be published with an editorial comment in the next issue of the editor’s journal.
On close inspection of the initial paper published in 2005, referred to by the two letters (the plaintiff was the first author and the alleged culprit the second author), it was clear that the data constituting the only original part of the three 2006 articles were published previously and had been reproduced in identical format in two and differently in the third article. The rest of the data were comparisons with previously published data sets from other countries. The “original” data set had indeed been plagiarised. In addition, the description of the methods was verbatim from the 2005 article, except for the instrument used in all three articles. As a result, there appeared to be clear plagiarism, illegitimate use of data and duplication of data. None of the 2006 articles cited each other and the initial 2005 article was cited in only two of the three articles.
The announced letter to the editor was indeed submitted but rejected on the grounds that informing the readership and issues of sanctions are the prerogative of the editor, not of scientists external to the journal.
This editor replied to his colleague suggesting that all three articles be retracted on the basis that none of them provided original data; to simultaneously publish a common letter in all three journals; and lastly to ban the main author for five years and the co-authors for three years.
Questions to COPE: (i) should the current academic institution of the main author be contacted for information? (ii) should there be any dissemination of this case beyond the three journals directly involved? (iii) is attempts to coordinate between journals a good idea or should each journal go on its own and make its own, probably different, decisions?
The Forum also noted COPE’s usual recommendation of caution in applying sanctions against authors where there has been no due process of investigation, such as an institutional finding of misconduct.