作者Tim Albert, trainer in medical writing; Elizabeth Wager, freelance writer and trainer, on behalf of COPE Council Version 12015年11月 How to cite this 应对招聘人员的议会 - 通过社交媒体提出的担忧。版本1. 2015.https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.14
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How should you respond when concerns are raised by a whistleblower about a published article directly via email to the editor or publisher? This could include anonymous or not anonymous concerns about scientific soundness or allegations of plagiarism, figure manipulation or other forms of misconduct.
我们的COPE材料可用于根据Creative Commons atjection-noncommercial-noderivs许可使用 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ 归因 - 您必须以作者或许可人指定的方式（但不是以任何方式归属于它们支持您或您对工作的使用）。 非商业广告 - 您可能无法使用这项工作以进行商业目的。No Derivative Works — 你可能不会改变,变换,或者在该work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website:publicationeThics.org.
Our journal (journal A) received a complaint from a 'Clare Francis' alerting us to a case of duplicate publication involving our journal and another (journal B). The article in journal A was published first, but submitted after the article in journal B. Clare Francis requested that the article in journal A should be withdrawn as it is duplicate publication. However, the article in journal B was an extended abstract, included in a section of selected conference proceedings. Our records do not go back far enough to check whether the authors informed us of this but they did not reference their abstract in the article in journal A. The article in journal A is a full paper, with a materials and methods section, detailed results and enough information for someone else to replicate the experiment. The extended abstract in B was not. When we contacted the editor of journal B, we were informed that they had received several such complaints from Clare Francis which have turned out to be somewhat spurious.
简单的谷歌搜索显示，“Clare Francis”是科学出版物中知名的自我称为举报人。
We responded that we had looked in detail at both papers and did not consider it to be a case of duplicate publication, and that we considered the matter closed. Clare Francis did not agree, and reiterated the issue of the article submission timings, insisting that the paper be withdrawn, and seeming to ignore the substance of what had actually been published. 'She' appealed to our status as a member of COPE as a reason that we should take on board these concerns. 我们不仅相信使用假名来追求这些问题是不道德的，但我们遵循了正确的程序，并对这些论文做出了正确的决定。如果论坛同意（在前一点，如果不是后者的话），我们将有兴趣听取。
作为编辑,我已多次敦促通过email (the true sender of which was not always clear) to retract the said review. At first—before the full extent of the retractions was confirmed—I could do no more than wait, rather than react prematurely, although even at that stage, tracking and trying to verify the claims took some time. Now I have analysed the review—which took a significant chunk of time—and identified the parts that cite the six references. Those constitute around 18% of the body text, mainly the more novel insights.
However, I am concerned about the additional workload that investigating the impact of retractions could have if we generally adopt the procedure of publishing corrigenda for every article that they affect. An alternative way of looking at the problem is to acknowledge that retracted references are registered as ‘retracted’ in the scientific indexes (although only if the journal concerned is indexed), and in the venues of publication, and hence on tracing a reference to its source, the reader of the review in which it is cited will see that the particular section of text is no longer supported by a published article.
The Forum agreed that the main priority is to inform the journal’s readers of the situation. The advice was to issue an expression of concern, stating the facts, that around 18% of the review text relates to retracted papers. It is then up to readers to evaluate the review and draw their own conclusions. The Forum questioned if the editor believed the article is tainted because the author has already been associated with misconduct. Some suggested contacting the author and asking him if he would like to retract the paper, or contacting the institution for a ruling.
Another suggestion was that the editor could write an editorial discussing the issue and whether removal of the six references alters the conclusions of the paper.
All agreed that the main issue was to alert the readers by way of an expression of concern rather than a correction.
The corresponding author of the paper explained that the same person had attacked every single article from his group for about 5 years, that they had responded to the critics adequately in the past and declined doing so again in this instance. He portrayed the letter as a disingenuous and fraudulent commentary and asked that we do not publish the letter, which in his view would be a disservice to science.
He attached to his email a correspondence with the editor of another journal, detailing a similar case for one of his previous articles. He also copied in four editors of other journals who received similar commentaries from the same person, as well as one opinion leader in the field. The four editors had rejected the letters and two had banned the author of the letters from publishing in their journal. One of these editors replied to confirm the story, stating that in his view, the letter he had received was not founded on fact, and backed the request not to publish this new commentary.
At this stage, the editor of our journal contacted me as managing editor to ask if he could reject the letter outright. I advised that he could, but only based on the scientific merit of the letter, and not on the history of its author. He sent the letter for review to the associate editor who handled the criticised paper, and who briefly concluded that the commentary was probably not worth publishing. The editor then rejected the letter, initially mentioning various peer reviewers, when in fact there was only one short set of comments.
The author of the letter was quite irate as, based on the editor’s initial replies, he expected his letter to be published in any case (with or without a response from the authors) and found the peer review process and decision letter that he received unsatisfactory. A first clarification of our position resulted in a long threatening point-by-point response, to which the editor responded by reasserting his position and clarifying again why the letter had been reviewed by a referee and himself and subsequently rejected.
The author of the letter then changed tactics and sent the publisher a rather libellous letter in which he argued that the editor is incompetent, was not impartial and was influenced by the author of the article; that the author of the paper and the peer reviewer (whose identity he does not know) have undisclosed conflicts of interest; and that opposite interests and prevalent opinions, relayed by a mainstream advocacy group and the WHO, colluded to silence him, a whistleblower. One of the assumed conflicts of interest mentioned involve the head of an institution from which the authors received a grant and is therefore very indirect. Another, however, relates to a global advocacy group, endorsed by the WHO and which seems to reflect the predominant opinion in the field, and which the authors presumably belong to. The corresponding author of the paper calls this group a forum for exchange on the topic, but it has a clear health policy agenda. The authors did not mention this in their declaration of interest.
我们的出版商通知他，她正在认真对待他的担忧，并会要求我按照应对的指导方针进行调查，特别是关于我们的披露政策。bob官方appAlthough the author of the letter accused us of being in breach of the COPE policy on fair peer review in an earlier correspondence, he then replied that in this case COPE’s ‘concepts’ are meaningless and, for example, anonymous peer review or impartiality are impossible, since he is the only researcher “who has exposed a long series of frauds” on the topic. He went on to reiterate his request that we (a) do not contact the authors of the paper he criticised (he was initially fine with the authors responding to his critique), (b) ask referees specifically if they belong to the advocacy group discussed above and (c) send, if needed, his blinded manuscript to ‘independent’ (from the advocacy group mentioned and industries) reviewers, of which he proposes three names.
我们没有回复最后一封电子邮件，并决定寻求应对如何最佳关闭的建议以及我们应该更先做的事情。特别是，我对您的意见感兴趣： - 编辑如何与第一个信件的作者一起通知？我们处理案件的主要弱点是什么？ — if the authors of the criticised paper belong to an advocacy group, should they disclose this in their declaration of interest section? - 如何回应关于不公平同行审查指控的信的作者，并拒绝对蒙蔽的同行审查制度？ - 我们应该，我们如何，检查这封信的作者是否真的试图对普遍意见做出有效点？ - 另一方面，如果他有一个未公开的议程，我们应该对他采取任何行动吗？
On the third point, if an editor is defamed on a blog or website, what can he do? Some suggested a dignified silence as the best option as otherwise it can fuel the problem and encourage more debate. However, all agreed that if the accusations are potentially libellous then the editor should seek legal advice.
Dr C quickly sent a couple of inflammatory emails in his usual style, where he repeated that there is a “universal conflict of interest that must be disclosed” because 90% of authors, editors and reviewers belong to the same bias ‘advocacy group.’ He then went on to contradict himself and, in my view, invalidate his only claim which may have had some merit:
“I would like to clarify that [the group] is absolutely not an ‘advocacy/regulatory group’. To take a modern example, it is something like Facebook where authors [...] advertise and publish the kind of publication that I have criticised in details for their flaws. In that case I don’t really see what the problem is.”