MISREPRESENTATION OF JOURNAL DECISION ON SOCIAL MEDIA
An author submitted an invited paper to a journal and, after a double anonymous peer review, the decision on the paper was to request ‘major revision’. The author decided not to revise the paper, and therefore effectively withdrew the paper, based on disagreements with the reviewers.
After withdrawing the article, the author posted it on their personal website and several other websites, along with commentary which named the journal and the editor personally and claimed that the paper was rejected by reviewers. (The reviewers’ recommendations are not provided to authors.) The author also wrote a blog post on the blog site of their university research institute which linked to the personal website. The university blog itself did not name the journal and editor. All websites identified made reference to the paper being ‘rejected’, not ‘major revision’. The author quoted from reviewer responses arguing that they were effectively biased against the subject matter.
The editor had no reason to believe that the reviewers were biased against the subject matter and private comments from reviewers to the editor indicated that this is not the case. The publisher also subsequently asked the author to correct the misinformation about the editorial decision.
The editor was alerted to the various posts by third parties and subsequently twice asked the author to remove references identifying the journal, arguing that the information about the journal decision was incorrect. The author then made public in an update on their blog that they had requested that the publisher reveal the individual reviewer recommendations.
COPE advice
It seems that there is little the journal can do other than request that the authors remove or modify their posts to social media, unless the authors have written something defamatory, in which case legal remedies may be available.
If the criticism is not actionable, perhaps it’s a case of do nothing. The author chose to withdraw their paper and is free to argue their case openly but not with reference to the journal.
If the editor does wish to respond, they could contact the author and explain the journal's policies, assuming the journal has already been clear in its peer review processes and procedures via its website (eg, explaining the model used (double anonymous), role of reviewers/editors and who makes the final decision, what the outcomes could be (accept/revise/reject), appeals/complaints process, and confidentiality). The editor could point out to the author that submitting a paper requires that authors adhere to those policies. Let the authors know their uploaded information is incorrect and should be corrected (also explain what major revision means and that they could have asked the editor to reconsider seemingly unreasonable requests or to extend deadlines). Ask for any content that comes from the review reports to be taken down, explaining that permission is needed to reveal any of the peer review report contents, except the reviewer recommendation as the decision is made by the editor (as has been explained in this case). Escalating to involve the institution is a possible next step (to ask the author to correct the uploaded information and future institution-wide education).
