Spat over tuberculosis study data leads to Expression of Concern

A fight over who owns tuberculosis study data has led the Journal of Clinical Microbiology to publish an Expression of Concern.

Here’s the notice:

The American Society for Microbiology (ASM) and the Journal of Clinical Microbiology (JCM) are issuing this Expression of Concern to alert readers to questions about the ownership of the data in the following publication:

M. Hoshide, L. Qian, C. Rodrigues, R. Warren, T. Victor, H. B. Evasco II, T. Tupasi, V. Crudu, and J. T. Douglas. Geographic Differences Associated with SNPs in Nine Gene Targets among Resistant Clinical Isolates of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. J. Clin. Microbiol. Published ahead of print 19 June 2013. doi:10.1128/JCM.00857-13.

JCM has been notified that substantial portions of the data presented in the manuscript were derived from results of a multicenter study centered at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) and funded by the National Institutes of Health, and that the manuscript by Hoshide et al. was submitted for publication without prior approval of the UCSD study center. This matter is now under discussion by the University of Hawaii, Dr. Douglas’s institution, and UCSD. Pending resolution of the questions raised regarding the right of the authors to publish these data, JCM has placed publication of the final version of the manuscript on hold. It should be noted that, according to ASM policies prohibiting duplicate publication, while the Hoshide et al. manuscript remains published, JCM cannot consider papers from other participants in the multicenter study if they include essentially the same data.

The first, second, and last authors of the study are at the University of Hawaii, while the others are from universities in India, Moldova, the Philippines, and South Africa. None is at UCSD.