Scientific Misconduct and Peer Review

Is There a Case for an International Medical Scientific Press Council?

(JAMA. 1994;272:166-167)

Douglas G. Altman; Iain Chalmers, MSc; Andrew Herxheimer, FRCP

Serious abuse of editorial power is rarely publicized, but evidence that it occurs is accumulating. Authors who believe that they have been dealt with unfairly have little possibility of a hearing of their complaint, and cases cannot easily be publicized because of fears of legal action. We describe briefly three cases in which the alleged misdeeds indicate that there were legitimate questions that needed answers. In the first case, an editor republished a previously published article without the authors' permission (but stated the opposite), attacked it in an accompanying editorial, and then denied the authors the right of reply. The other cases concerned a commissioned review article that was plagiarized and an editor with an undisclosed vested interest. An appeal process is needed for authors who think that they are victims of editorial abuse of power. We suggest that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors turn its attention to editorial misconduct and explore possible procedures for allowing authors' grievances to be heard and for possible sanctions if complaints are upheld. An International Medical Scientific Press Council might be established to produce a code of conduct for editors and a corresponding taxonomy of inappropriate editorial behavior.

(JAMA. 1994;272:166-167)

THE PRESSURES on medical researchers to publish and the consequent lapses of scientific standards have become well documented in recent years, most recently by Lock and Wells.[1] Much less often discussed are failures by editors (and reviewers) to behave honestly and honorably toward authors. Dewey[2] recently raised several important issues in his review of problems encountered by authors when dealing with journals. Most of his examples relate to inefficiency or poor procedures, such as making extensive changes to a manuscript after acceptance but not showing the changes to the author until the proof stage. Others are more serious, such as rejecting a manuscript after acceptance (perhaps because of a change of editor) or after all the conditions of a conditional acceptance have been met and abuse of power when the editor is also an author. Refusal to allow authors the right of reply when a journal has published correspondence criticizing their article is another occasional difficulty. Unethical editorial practices also occur, but they have rarely been described. In this article, we consider the published evidence and give brief details of three cases in which misconduct may have occurred. Against this background we then consider how aggrieved authors might seek redress.

EVIDENCE

Previously Publicized Cases

Rennie[3] summarized the infamous case of Sir Cyril Burt, who used his position as editor to publish many of his own research papers (some allegedly containing fictitious data and with nonexistent coauthors), altered the text of other authors' manuscripts without their agreement, and published letters to the editor that he had written himself under false names to attack a rival.

Another publicized case concerned the guest editor of a special conference issue of a journal. The editor included within the special issue one of his own manuscripts that was not sent for peer review (unlike all the other manuscripts), was not appropriate to the content of the journal, and had not even been presented at the meeting.

We are not aware of other published cases of editorial misconduct, although the concept has been briefly discussed before[3] [4]

Additional Cases

We know of three additional cases of apparent editorial impropriety. We do not seek to establish here that there was misconduct, only that there was clear evidence suggestive of possible misconduct. Reluctantly, we have had to comply with legal advice not to give full details of any of these cases. However, we give brief descriptions of the main allegations. (We note that none of us was an author of any of these articles.)

Case 1.--An editor republished in full an article that had previously appeared in another journal. Although this was stated to be with the authors' permission, the authors had not in fact been consulted. Publication was accompanied by a hostile editorial attacking the article. The authors were originally refused the right of reply to this editorial. When we tried to publish an account of the case, the editor gave a misleading account of events to try to dissuade another editor from publishing our manuscript.

Case 2.--A scientist was invited by an editor to write a review article. He submitted the manuscript and received a letter of thanks and, a while later, the proofs (returned by courier, as requested), but his review was not published. About 6 months later he noticed in Current Contents, an indexing publication, that an article with the same title had been published in the same journal. When he read it he realized that the authors must have seen his own article. Most of the introduction and much of the following text was identical or almost identical to the text of his own manuscript. The author received no reply, let alone an explanation, from the editor.

Case 3.--A manuscript describing a randomized controlled trial comparing two active drugs and placebo was submitted to a journal. This manuscript reported serious adverse effects of one of the drugs. Unknown to the authors, the editor of the journal to which the manuscript had originally been submitted was a paid consultant of the manufacturers of the drug. The editor sent the manuscript to several reviewers including at least one who was employed by the pharmaceutical company in question. While we do not argue against the use of industry reviewers in general, in this case the use of one or more reviewers with the same vested interest as the editor could only decrease the possibility of the manuscript's being assessed fairly even when, as in this case, it was also sent to several other referees. The manuscript was rejected and was not published until 2 years later in a much less prominent journal.

COMMENT

In recent years, author misconduct has rightly received considerable publicity. By contrast, editorial misconduct seems to have been almost totally neglected. Some aspects of editorial behavior fall into the category of inefficiency or unfairness rather than dishonesty--Dewey[2] discussed several examples. A more important difficulty arises when an editor is also an author. Although Dewey[2] suggested that journals should publicize their policy for dealing with this case, Rennie[3] felt that there are compelling reasons why an editor should not publish research in his or her own journal if he or she made the decision about that research. Our main focus in this article, however, is not editorial inefficiency or unfairness. It is actual dishonesty by editors toward authors--misdeeds that would violate an editorial code of conduct if one existed.

The cases of clear or possible editorial misconduct of which we are aware fall into three main categories--dishonesty, favoritism/victimization, and conflict of interest. The last of these categories is one of the few aspects of misconduct that has received any attention. The target group here has largely been authors and reviewers, although the statement by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors[5] does extend to conflict of interest for editors.

Reluctance to Publicize Misdeeds

As was initially the case with attempts to raise consciousness about fraud by authors, it is tempting to suggest that the few publicized cases are the only ones and that there is no real problem. Because of the secrecy inherent in the editorial aspects of scientific publishing and fears of litigation, incidents such as the ones we have described herein are unlikely to be publicized. We simply do not know either the frequency or scope of unacceptable editorial behavior. Regardless of its true prevalence, it is clear from informal discussions that many researchers believe that they have been victims of unethical behavior by editors. There is currently no outlet for complaints against perceived editorial abuse of power, and it is also extremely difficult to publish details of particular cases. We have full documentation of case 1, but have failed in our attempts to publish a full account of it. Not surprisingly, the journal with the ex-editor whom we were accusing of misconduct was not interested. Two other journals that had been involved in the case to some degree suggested that their readers "would not be interested in the behavior of an editor of a journal with which they are not familiar." Two more journals that had not been involved did not see why they should publish the story. One journal never responded to our submission. We believe that at least two of these six journals were concerned about the legal implications of the allegations in our manuscript. Although convinced of the importance of publicizing such episodes--not to be vindictive but to heighten awareness of the phenomenon of editorial abuse of power--we eventually abandoned our attempts to do so.

What Can Be Done?

Editors were at first reluctant to face the issue of scientific fraud by authors, so it is not surprising that they are unwilling to publicize failings of their editorial colleagues. That said, editors have valid concerns about the legal implications, and it is undeniable that they have no responsibility to publish such allegations. We wanted to give fuller details of the cases summarized herein but had to accept legal advice against doing so.

We suggest, therefore, that the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors should consider editorial misconduct and investigate possible procedures for allowing authors' grievances to be heard. In particular, an International Scientific Press Council might be created[6] (or perhaps a Medical Scientific Press Council). It would be useful for such a council to produce a code of conduct for editors and a corresponding taxonomy of inappropriate editorial behavior.

We would hope that journals would sign an agreement to abide by a prespecified investigation procedure. The nonparticipation by journals in this system would then be a matter of public record. Likewise, if a journal signed the agreement and then failed to comply with the agreed procedures, this too would become public knowledge. We would hope that a consequence of this system would be greater accountability of editors. As with other potentially contentious issues, there should be considerable advantages in journals having considered the issue before any case arose.

What should happen if a complaint against an editor is upheld? Clearly the appropriate outcome would depend on the seriousness of the offense. The first requirement would be to publish the judgment and rectify the offense, if this is possible. Other possibilities include the wider publication of the council's ruling, perhaps in a publication such as the bulletins of the European Association of Science Editors or the Council of Biology Editors or in a leading scientific journal (based on a rotation system) or both. When the journal is run by or for a professional society, the editor has a clear additional responsibility to that society. Therefore, another route for complaints to be aired is via the publications or journals committee of the society, but probably few societies have a specific mechanism for dealing with such cases. Nearly all journals have editorial boards, however, and we imagine that members might not be too keen on maintaining their contacts with an editor who has been acting unethically.

Finally, we emphasize that we are not suggesting that such a council would act in a policing role. Rather it would act as an appellate organization existing to set appropriate standards and determine if these standards had been breached.

Presented in part at the Second International Congress on Peer Review in Biomedical Publication, Chicago, Ill, September 11, 1993.

We gratefully thank the authors of the manuscripts for providing details of cases 1 through 3.

Reprint requests to Medical Statistics Laboratory, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, PO Box 123, 61 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, England WC2A 3PX (Mr Altman).

References

1. Lock S, Wells F, eds. Fraud and Misconduct in Scientific Research. London, England: British Medical Association; 1993.

2. Dewey M. Authors have rights too. BMJ. 1993;306:318-320.

3. Rennie D. Problems in peer review and fraud: cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt. In: Balancing Act: Essays to Honour Stephen Lock. London, England: Keynes Press; 1991:9-19.

4. LaFollette MC. Stealing Into Print. Berkeley: University of California Press; 1992.

5. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Conflict of interest. Lancet. 1993;341:742-743.

6. Herxheimer A. Make scientific journals more responsive and responsible. Scientist. March 20, 1989:9, 11.

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