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COPE Members bring specific (anonymised) publication ethics issues to the COPE Forum for discussion and advice. The advice from the COPE Forum meetings is specific to the particular case under consideration and may not necessarily be applicable to similar cases either past or future. The advice is given by the Forum participants (COPE Council and COPE Members from across all regions and disciplines).

COPE Members may submit a case for consideration.

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Showing 221–240 of 780 results
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Satire in scholarly publishing

    An intentional satire of a randomised controlled trial was published in a journal. In addition to multiple overt clues that the article was fake in the text, the article ended with a clear and direct statement in the acknowledgments that it was satire. Investigators conducting a systematic review on the topic inadvertently included the satire article in their review as a legitimate manus…
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    Case Closed

    Is it plagiarism to use text verbatim from a manuscript review?

    A commentary was reviewed by journal A and rejected. The paper was then submitted and accepted at journal B. Journal B published the commentary. After publication, a reviewer from journal A wrote to journal B with a complaint of plagiarism. Text from his/her review was used in the commentary published in journal B Question(s) for the COPE Forum• How should the editor of jo…
  • Case
    On-going

    Authorship dispute regarding author order

    A paper was accepted in 2012 but there was a lengthy disagreement between the four authors regarding the order of authorship. The authors were advised that the paper would not be published unless all authors could sign a written agreement on the order of authorship and copyright form. An agreement was received in 2015 that specified the order of authorship and named one of the authors as…
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    Case Closed

    When to conclude correspondence from reader about errors in a published article

    A reader, Dr A, wrote to the editors explaining a number of concerns she had with some of the figures in a paper published in the journal. The editors sought the advice of an associate editor with more expertise in the subspecialty of the paper. The associate editor concurred with Dr A’s opinion of the paper and the authors were invited to respond. After some back and forth correspondence, the…
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    Case Closed

    Data manipulation and institute’s internal review

    A journal received an enquiry from a reader stating that they had found some discrepancies in the spectra published in the electronic supporting information for a published paper. They suggested that the discrepancies would be consistent with the spectra being manually ‘cleaned’. If this were true, the characterisation and purity of the compounds reported in the paper would be called into quest…
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    On-going

    Would the loss of a clinical licence in one country impact on the ability to do clinical work in another?

    The associate editor of journal X identified author Y on a submission paper as someone who had lost their license to practice due to malpractice. As part of the settlement, author Y had agreed to refrain from providing services to patients. Author Y now resides on a different continent, and the study presented in the submission was apparently carried out in in this continent. There is no mentio…
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    Case Closed

    Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal

    Our journal has been contacted by an author who would like to submit a review article. The author responded to a request for an invited review from a predatory journal without realizing it was a predatory journal. The author submitted the article only to receive an unexpected invoice and clear evidence of no peer review. The author investigated the journal and then realized the predatory nature…
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    Case Closed

    Suspected unattributed text in a published article

    An article was published in July. In October, a corrigendum was published to correct large sections of unattributed text. Two weeks later the journal and publisher received a complaint from a reader who accused the author of the published article of using text from an unpublished collaborative manuscript on which the published author was participating. This participation on the collaborative wo…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    The role of the lead author

    An author on a "perspective/consensus" type paper continues to provide new editorial as well as substantial content comments on consecutive versions of a paper, and currently disagrees with the content of the final version of the paper. The other eight authors have approved the final version of the paper prepared and circulated by the lead author. At this stage, the lead author sees no rational…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Case histories and post publication debate

    A letter to the editor from reader A was received by our journal concerning a published case history from author B.  Reader A questioned the choice of treatment and author B's conclusion regarding the reason why the patient died. We believe this case raises at least two interesting questions. Firstly, the patient, or in this case the patient's relatives, could possibly suffer an addition…
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    Case Closed

    Publication of post-doctoral work

    In 2012, Dr X started her post-doctoral training under a fellowship. She worked on the project until 2014, when the fellowship ended. She did all the work herself, and gave two seminars showing her results and progress, with positive feedback. When needed, she consulted with the supervisor or with a senior scientist in the laboratory (who has since resigned). By the time she finished, she had w…
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    Case Closed

    What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?

    A short research article described a new method and tested the method, showing proof-of-concept that the method worked; the idea for the method is presented as the authors’ own. On publication, the paper receives an overwhelmingly positive response from the community. Shortly after publication, the editorial team is contacted by a PhD student and their supervisor who had published the id…
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    Case Closed

    Author requests permission to publish review comments

    An author submitted a Forum manuscript critiquing an article published in the journal six years previously. The Forum manuscript was reviewed by three reviewers who all recommended rejection, and was evaluated by an associate editor and a senior editor, who rejected the manuscript on the grounds that the reviewers were unconvinced by the critique and felt that it did not really advance the subj…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author of rejected paper publicly names and criticises peer reviewer

    The first author of a paper rejected by our journal publicly identified one of the four peer reviewers for the paper by name. She did this during a media interview conducted after the paper was published by another journal. The first author implied in that interview and subsequently on Twitter that the paper was rejected because of that person's review and also claimed the reviewer did not reve…
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    Case Closed

    Institutional investigation of authorship dispute

    We received a claim that several authors were removed from an article published in one of our journals before the article was submitted. None of those said to have been removed were acknowledged. The claimant requested retraction. They said the article was previously submitted to other journals, listing them as an author. They provided what they said was an earlier version of the article…
  • Case
    On-going

    Authorship dispute and possible unreported protocol amendment

    Our journal accepted a randomised controlled trial for publication which has not yet been published online. In the submitted paper, the randomised controlled trial is described as commencing in 2004 with completion in 2011. We have received an email and telephone call from an individual not listed as an author or reviewer of the paper with the following alleged disputes:• He was an invest…
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    Case Closed

    Request by organisation to retract article and publish expression of concern

    A group of unspecified members of an organisation have written an expression of concern (letter via email) to the editors wherein they request that an article previously published in the journal be retracted since they believe it is biased and inaccurate about regulation details within the organisation. They are further requesting that their letter be published in the journal. The editor…
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    Case Closed

    Author accused of stealing research and publishing under their name

    We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student. Our journal is a fully English language publication and the accusing third party and author A are from a non-English speaking country, as is the student (assumedly). The accusing third party forwarded the…
  • Case
    On-going

    Paper B plagiarised paper A: what to do if a journal does not respond?

    The author X of a paper published by journal A complained to the editor-in-chief of journal A that his/her paper has been plagiarised by a paper that has been published later by journal B. Moreover, the authors of the paper in journal B allegedly did not respond to letters sent by author X asking for an explanation about the apparent plagiarism. The editor-in-chief of journal A compared…
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    Case Closed

    Author requests for certain experts not to be included in the editorial process

    A prospective author contacted the editorial office of a medical journal to request that an intended submission was not reviewed or consulted on by experts involved in a number of published guidelines on the topic of the paper. The author named some of these experts, which included members of the journal’s editorial board (including editor A). The author justified this request by explain…

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