期刊的一位编辑委员会成员提交了一个未经请求的审查文章。编辑表示，该期刊将考虑这篇文章，但怀疑这篇文章已被委托或甚至由毒品公司撰写。他/批定提交人必须在可以接受这篇文章之前提供金融披露声明。该期刊发表了审查条，这些条款被两个独立审稿人归因。他的竞争利益披露的作者，他一直是销售该药物的公司的付费顾问。出版后几个月，药物公司的代理商订购了这篇文章的重印。该代理要求措辞：“此文献审查由[x]支持”被包含在每个重印的封面上。该代理商被告知，由于提交人没有披露，因此无法增加此声明。代理人坚持，所以期刊联系了作者。提交人问：“最后一篇文章是否有这些词语或某种东西，这些词或某种东西指出了[x]的部分支持？” A copy of the agent’s wording and the competing interest statement from the published article were sent to the author, who replied that he was fine with it as long as the publisher was. The author was then asked to explain the extent of the drug company’s involvement in writing the review article. The author replied that the competing interest statement in the article was accurate; the review had been written independently of any pharmaceutical company, and that the requested statement from the agent was inappropriate. The author was contacted again to point out the contradiction in his two replies. At the same time the agent was asked to question the drug company as to whether it had paid the author to write the review, and to confirm the extent to which the drug company had been involved in preparation of the manuscript. The agent did not reply; neither did the drug company. Eventually, the agent cancelled the reprint order. The author finally replied to confirm that he had been confused by the original request, thinking that clarification of whether he was a paid consultant to the drug company was required. He said that when it became apparent in a follow-up email that the drug company wanted the extra statement added, he realised it was inappropriate. The author assured the editors that the drug company would write a letter of explanation soon. The letter has yet to arrive.
提交给国际医学杂志的一篇论文进行了外部审查，随后邀请作者提交修订版。最初提交的论文包括来自两个不同研究机构的作者和来自企业赞助的作者。最初的提交附有个人作者贡献的适当描述，负面的利益冲突声明，和适当的确认部分。在提交订正稿时，附信说，为了符合要求的修订和医学杂志编辑国际委员会对作者身份的定义，对作者名单进行了修订，但如果编辑小组认为有必要，可以重新谈判这项修订。该修正案涉及将所有作者从两个研究机构中的第二个机构中除名，留下作者(一对夫妇)从第一个研究机构和资助人。第二个研究机构现在只在致谢部分提到。在修订版中，利益冲突声明也作了修改，说明其余的作者已经为手稿中描述的技术提交了专利申请。该论文随后被内部和外部重新审查，并邀请进一步修订的手稿，并提交了相应的。这篇论文的定稿已被接受出版。在论证阶段，第二研究所的资深作者联系了杂志，询问了稿件的进展情况。 During the course of this discussion it became clear that neither he nor his colleagues were aware that they were no longer authors, nor that the paper had been accepted for publication. On their instigation an investigation was initiated by the appropriate authority at the first research institution, and subsequently by the federal government, because the second research institution had received government funding for the project. On discovering the authorship dispute, the journal cancelled the planned publication and informed the corresponding author that the authorship dispute would have to be resolved before publication could be considered. The remaining authors at the time of acceptance initially refused to cooperate with the investigation and formally withdrew the manuscript. They also requested that the journal should not communicate with the authors who had been removed and should not provide a copy of the revised manuscript to any external party. The journal cooperated with the investigations and released information on the paper despite this request.