Abstract
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As the Editor-in-Chief of an influential journal in the field, I take considerable caution, along with my team of respected Section Editors, in ensuring that the quality of published work in our Journal is of credible and well-respected caliber. All articles go through rigorous peer review and are handled with the utmost responsibility and care. However, as we—and many other reputable journal Editors—have come to experience, some articles that include manipulated data, figures, or even gel bands, still manage to work their way through the peer review system without alarm.
Such is the case, unfortunately, with one article that was recently published by this Journal. We were alerted—after the article was published—that the article included several figures in which the gel bands may have been manipulated. After a further thorough investigation, it was discovered that other articles from the same laboratory were found to have the same problem and had been retracted from other journals, including Cancer Research, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Journal of Biological Chemistry. We concurred, and DNA and Cell Biology 28:161–167 by Trapasso, et al., was therefore retracted.
Because of this growing concern of manipulated data in manuscripts, we have put in place additional measures and benchmarks to protect ourselves further from articles with false or manipulated data. Since figures may illustrate selected gel bands from isolated gels or membranes, or alternatively, only summary tables of the results of data analysis, but to the metadata on which the analysis was made, the Section Editors and I have reached a consensus that it may be important to have the underlying information made available during the peer review process.
We have reached a consensus that for many submissions, since figures may illustrate selected gel bands from isolated gels or membranes, or alternatively, only summary tables of the results of data analysis, but not the metadata on which the analysis was made, it may be important to have available the underlying information. Therefore, the Instructions for Authors have been modified to indicate that these Supplemental Materials may be requested before decisions can be made.
This situation mentioned in this study is just one example of the ever-increasing and overwhelming difficulty journal editors face on a monthly, if not weekly, basis. Plagiarism, self-citing, data manipulation, copyright disputes, and so forth, are among the many daunting problems facing academic publishing today.
An additional increasing concern, beyond that of manipulated data, is to ensure that even the byline of the authors listed on the article are indeed the intended contributors of the work. Copyright forms are sometimes not submitted—or even worse—are forged by coauthors for reasons unbeknownst to my editorial team and me, which could lead to an article being published with an inaccurate and potentially career-damaging byline to the unsuspecting authors who have nothing to do with the work. So is the case for one manuscript that was submitted to this Journal. The article was revised to address the recommendations of the peer reviewers, the revision was rereviewed, and was subsequently accepted. Some of the coauthors on the article refused to sign the copyright release forms because they were dissatisfied with the final version of the manuscript, and, ultimately, the authors requested a withdrawal of the accepted article.
DNA and Cell Biology prides itself on upholding the most rigorous and steadfast principles of scientific publishing and, as Editor-in-Chief, I want to make it abundantly clear that before any article, or its revision, is submitted for peer review, all listed coauthors must concur on the data, its analysis, and its interpretation. Anything less would be a disservice to our readers and our field. If you have further comments, concerns, questions, or would just like to continue this dialogue, please feel free to contact me directly at dnaandcellbiology@nyu.edu.
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