You are a medical publication professional and have been supporting a client with a secondary manuscript for a Phase 3 study. You recommended target journals and worked with the author team throughout the submission process. Following the publication, it becomes apparent that the manuscript was submitted to a predatory journal. Unfortunately, the journal has no retraction policy and asks for a large sum of money in processing fees to retract the article. The authors have signed a copyright agreement giving the journal full copyright of the manuscript. What would you do?
A. Request the editorial office to retract the manuscript and seek legal advice from the sponsor company; at the same time, plan a re-submission to another journal.
B. Recommend against retraction as this can negatively impact reputation and review the copyright agreement to determine if you are able to submit elsewhere, such as to a preprint server.
C. Suggest that the authors add some new and substantive data to support submission to a new, reputable, journal as a secondary publication.
D. Working with co-authors, write a response to the journal highlighting their policies and exposing them as a predatory journal and showcase this letter via authors social media channels.
This survey is closed. Survey results will be posted in December 2023.