A nursing journal has retracted a 2019 paper by a researcher in Scotland after learning that she’d taken a wee bit more credit for the article than she deserved.
The paper was titled “Co-designing technology with people with dementia and their carers: Exploring user perspectives when co-creating a mobile health application” and was written by Siobhan O’Connor. The article, which appeared in the International Journal of Older People Nursing (IJOPN), has been cited seven times, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science.
O’Connor had been a doctoral student at the University of Glasgow before moving to the University of Edinburgh, from which she received the Florence Nightingale Scholarship, a year-long fellowship award for nursing researchers. While at Edinburgh, she wrote and published the paper in question, using data that she’d had access to in Glasgow.
About two months prior to publication of the paper, O’Connor was named an associate editor of the IJOPN, where she had previously served as a social media editor and peer reviewer. (She no longer holds that position.)
An initial, and rather vague, retraction notice for the paper read:
The above article from the International Journal of Older People Nursing, published online on 14 December 2019 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Sarah H. Kagan, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd following the outcomes of an institutional investigation and recommendation by the University of Glasgow. The retraction has been agreed upon due to the unauthorised use of data by the author Siobhan O’Connor, including her failure to acknowledge the contribution of other researchers and the funding source.
In response to our queries, the journal reissued the retraction to provide a bit more clarity:
The above article from the International Journal of Older People Nursing, published online on 14 December 2019 in the Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been retracted by agreement between the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, Sarah H. Kagan, and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. following the outcomes of an institutional investigation and recommendation by the University of Edinburgh in cooperation with the University of Glasgow. The author wrote the paper, and it was published while she was a lecturer at Edinburgh, using funded data belonging to Glasgow that she had access to when she previously was a doctoral student there. The retraction has been agreed upon due to the unauthorised use of data by the author Siobhan O’Connor beyond what was previously agreed, including her failure to acknowledge the contribution of other researchers and the funding source.
The paper does provide the following acknowledgement:
The author gratefully acknowledges funding from the Burdett Trust for Nursing who supported this research study.
That suggests an additional, unnamed funder supported the work, as well. However, the press office for the University of Glasgow refused to answer questions about the case, and we could not find current contact information for O’Connor.
Kagan told us:
I learned of the problems with the paper “Co-designing technology with people with dementia and their careers: Exploring user perspectives when co-creating a mobile health application” on 4th February 2021 from the University of Edinburgh’s Associate Dean of Research Ethics and Integrity/Research Misconduct. The Dean informed me of the university’s investigation. I concurred with their findings and recommendation for retraction. I reached out to Dr. O’Connor via all her available email addresses to discuss the matter. Sadly, I received no reply.
She added that:
Dr. O’Connor resigned abruptly from the journal, noting she was leaving academia for personal reasons and taking a position in the pharmaceutical industry closer to home in Ireland.
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She’s now based in the school of nursing in NUI Galway, Ireland