Science for Sale: Authorship Confirmed

Abstract

In her News Focus Story “China's publication bazaar” (29 November 2013, p. [1035][1]), M. Hvistendahl highlighted the issue of scientific articles being for sale in China. This problem is not widely known by journal editors outside of China. The article indicated that a meta-analysis published in the Canadian Journal of Neurological Sciences (CJNS) was available for sale on 21 August 2012 on Core Editing's blog, before submission of the paper to CJNS. At CJNS, we conducted an investigation of the paper in question. The corresponding author was able to provide detailed information of their data analysis, including screen shots of a list of files used for data analysis from the first author's computer, output from the data analysis program used, copies of handwritten notes used for data analysis, records of discussion between the authors regarding the results, and previous versions of the paper. The authors also provided records of e-mail correspondences from February 2012 between the first author and the author of a paper included in the meta-analysis in which the first author asked and obtained data for the meta-analysis. These e-mail communications were independently verified by the U.S.-based author who provided the additional data. On the basis of this information, we concluded that the paper published in CJNS was the work of the first and the corresponding author of the paper. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.342.6162.1035