In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D) in two of the manuscripts.
Four of these manuscripts (manuscripts 1, 5, 6 and 8) were rejected after the editorial review because they were not found to be original. One has been sent to reviewers and 6 are with associate editors for initial review. One of the associate editors has advised that the manuscript they had been reviewing (manuscript 10) has a similarity index of 97% The editor in chief checked the manuscript and found that the author had completely copied it from a previously published article although it was stated in the cover letter that the material had not been previously published or submitted elsewhere for publication. The author only changed the author names.
The editor in chief also checked the other submissions, including the rejected ones. Three of the rejected manuscripts (1, 5 and 8) and another manuscript under review (2) had verbatim texts, comprising 50–94% of the related manuscript. The other two manuscripts (6 and 9) were duplicated from previously published articles containing more than 50% verbatim text where author A is a common author.
The editor in chief has halted the review process of the 11 manuscripts until the matter has been resolved. Additionally, they intend to contact the author and coauthors’ institutions and proposed not accepting further submissions from author A for at least 5 years.
COPE advice
The editor has an obligation to consider the merits of each manuscript individually; rejecting all is not justified. COPE does not recommend banning authors for ethical infractions, so if the author is not banned, it seems logical that each submission must be evaluated carefully. The editor is probably correct in suspecting the worst, given the history of this author, but that should just prompt a careful review, perhaps plagiarism checking all manuscripts before the review process begins rather than after.
The editor should contact the authors' institutions, particularly because this individual is a resident, so that corrective action can be taken before this author gets out into the competitive work world where pressure to publish can create the incentive to cut corners. This behaviour needs to be corrected at source.