Email to Frontiers in Human Neuroscience about a manuscript submission
This is my reply to the automatic notification email that i received about a submission of a manuscript, with two coauthors former chinese colleagues.
To :
Dr. Jae Kun Shim, Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience-Sensory Neuroscience
Dr. Adam James Reeves and Dr. Baingio Pinna, Topic Editors of “The Future of Perceptual Illusions: From Phenomenology to Neuroscience Vol II”
All Editorial Board Members and Office of Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
Dear Editorial Board Members, Topic Editors, and Managers,
I received the email attached at the bottom of this message. It informs me of a new submission of a manuscript with me as coauthor.
I was not aware of this submission until i received the message from the Frontiers submission system.
This submission was done without my consent.
My current understanding is that this submission uses as a base an old working draft between only me and Dr. Jinfeng Huang (+ at that time a passive work of Dr. Yifeng Zhou), without my knowledge, without demand, without discussion.
I consider this behaviour from the other authors outrageous, unscientific, unethical.
Looking rapidly in the submitted manuscript i found issues with which i do not agree. The most obvious are:
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This work was carried under my scientific and technical supervision by Ms. Dr. Jinfeng Huang, during her PhD at the University of Science and Technology of China (2013-2018). The administrative supervisor was Dr. Yifeng Zhou, allowed by USTC to officially supervise PhD students. I do not understand what is the contribution of the two authors Zhijie Zhang and Pan Zhang. May be they found the study interesting.
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I did participate also in data analyses. It is not mentioned in the manuscript. Actually, Dr. Jinfeng Huang and myself collaborated very closely on all study design, data collection, data curation and analyses, manuscript preparation and writing.
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it was my idea and work to propose the modelling approach as a theoretical background. In fact, I wanted to go further by proposing a neurophysiological model to account for the data. Many very unpleasant things happened that made me postpone any work on this issue.
Given the above facts, I consider that :
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The two persons Zhijie Zhang and Pan Zhang cannot be coauthors.
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Given the work done, I must be the last author.
But of course, I am not member of any public scientific institution anymore.
Therefore I propose one of the following solutions:
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My name is taken out of the manuscript and the other authors agree to put in the manuscript’s “Author contributions”, or the Editorial Board Members of journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience imposes it, the following sentence: “Dr. Tzvetomir Tzvetanov, who proposed the scientific topic, supervised the work, and closely collaborated with Dr. Jinfeng Huang on all aspects of this study, retracted his name from the publication due to what he considers outrageous and unethical behaviour from the other authors; see the link provided by Dr. T.Tzvetanov”; of course, the journal can further add its own statement
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You cancel the submission
Given the behaviour which i am facing, and some previous issues between me and different parties in P.R.China, I hope you will all understand that from now on i will make public any communication about this manuscript. This starts with this email (see https://tzvet.github.io).
Please pay attention and inform any other party, including the “current coauthors” on this manuscript, that :
any person or representative of a person communicating with me, with any means, on this topic, is aware that the communication can be made public by me at any time. That person or its representative agrees that all communication material can be made public by me, irrespective of what is stated in the message.
I have no intention at this stage to personally contact the other authors in order to ask “what is going on”.
It is always very regrettable to arrive at actions as this one, but I sincerely hope there will be at least one among you that will understand its necessity.
Thank you for your attention.
Tzvetomir Tzvetanov, PhD
On 2022/5/1 12:31, Frontiers In Human Neuroscience Editorial Office wrote:
Dear Dr Tzvetanov
We are pleased to inform you that we have received the manuscript “Local and global contexts influence orientation perception” to be considered for publication in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, section Sensory Neuroscience.
You can access the review forum and track the progress of your manuscript using the following link: https://www.frontiersin.org//Journal/MySubmission.aspx?stage=100
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———–MANUSCRIPT DETAILS———– Manuscript title: Local and global contexts influence orientation perception Manuscript ID: 933578 Submitted By: Yifeng Zhou Authors: Yifeng Zhou, Jinfeng Huang, Zhijie Zhang, Tzvetomir Tzvetanov and Pan Zhang Journal: Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, section Sensory Neuroscience Research Topic: The Future of Perceptual Illusions: From Phenomenology to Neuroscience Vol II Article type: Original Research Submitted on: 01 May 2022
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