AUTHOR DID NOT SEE REVIEWS OR REVISIONS TO THE MANUSCRIPT AND DID NOT GIVE APPROVAL FOR PUBLICATION
Case
Approximately 1 year after publication of an article, journal received a letter from one of the authors saying that they had not seen the reviews of the paper, the revisions of the paper or approved the final manuscript for publication. This was subsequently confirmed by the other authors who said that contact with the complainant had “broken down” and that the corresponding author had indicated that all named authors had given their approval for publication (then current journal practice). An additional relevant fact is that one of the authors was editor-in-chief of the journal at the time the paper was processed. The complainant did not wish the paper to be withdrawn but wanted the opportunity to publish a correction or addendum following sight of the reviewers’ comments.
Journal understand that this matter has also been taken up by the employing institution of the co-authors (at which the complainant was previously an employee but has since left) but do not yet know of any outcome.
At the time, journal policy was for the corresponding author to sign an exclusive license form that stated “You hereby warrant that in the case of a multi-authored article you have obtained, in writing, authorisation to enter into this agreement on their behalf and that all co-authors have read and agreed the terms of this agreement”.
Following correspondence between the various parties the journal took the following actions:
– changed journal policy so that all authors sign an authorship declaration form, asserting that they meet the criteria for authorship;
– offer the complainant sight of the reviewers’ comments and the opportunity to publish an addendum or comment if they have points additional to those made in the paper;
– publish an apology by the authors for knowingly proceeding with publication without approval of the complainant.
In addition, the journal would like advice from COPE on whether our proposed response to this situation has been satisfactory.
COPE advice
Reassured that the paper had been dealt with blindly, and so there was no issue of misconduct on the part of the editor-in-chief. For online submissions, the editor should ensure that the email addresses of all authors are recorded. Some journals copy in all authors when contacting the corresponding author. Other suggestions were to ask all of the authors to sign the copyright form. This is usually done by the publishers and can be another assurance that all authors have seen the final version of the paper. As the institute is already aware of the situation, there is no point in contacting them. The Forum agreed that publication of the apology would be a sufficient reproach for the editor-in-chief.
