You are here

Case

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.

Filter by topic

Showing 121–140 of 780 results
  • Case
    Case Closed

    An ambiguous plagiarism case

    A paper was published in journal A. The plagiarism check tool did not show any similarity during the peer review process.   Some time after publication of the paper, the editor-in-chief was contacted by an author who had published a paper in journal B. They claimed that the paper published in journal A was plagiarised from their MSc research project thesis and asked journal A to ret…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Can a journal retract a paper against the recommendation of an institutional investigation?

    A research article, published several years ago, was alleged to have integrity issues relating to some of the figures. Following detailed checking of the figures, the editors confirmed these issues and found more issues. The authors provided the raw data, some of which also had integrity issues. An institutional investigation concluded that the data were sound but the editor still feels uneasy…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Publishing a letter concerning a paper published in another journal many years ago

    Recently, Journal X received a letter to the editor based on an article published in another journal about 8 years previously. The editors of Journal X believe this letter is important to their readers. The original article was a seminal paper which changed practice. However, a group of authors challenged some of the data published in this trial in a subsequent review published about 7 ye…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Using industry knowledge to evaluate an ethics case

    A journal owned by publisher A recently posted an article critical of publisher B. Both publishers A and B are COPE members. Publisher B has already responded with several claims about the author’s methodology. Publisher A would normally defer to the journal’s editors. However, because the content of the article relates to the publishing industry, publisher A has particular insights into the to…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Reader concerns about ethics approval and consent from a vulnerable population

    A reader raised concerns on social media about whether informed consent for research reported in a published article was obtained. An investigation by the journal resulted in the publication of a correction explaining that written, informed consent was obtained from the research participants.   A separate, small group of researchers followed up and raised further questions regarding…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Use of secondary data without proper attribution

    Journal A received a paper on a cross sectional study from six coauthors. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Two months later, a clinician contacted the journal and said that the material was taken from their thesis submitted to the same institution six years previously.    The corresponding author explained that the data were obtained from a large institution database and pro…
  • Case
    On-going

    Salami slicing/duplicate publication

    An article with four authors was published in journal A. The same article with a slight change in the title and one additional author, was published three months later in journal B. The authors had submitted the article to both journals at the same time.   The number of study subjects in the two articles were the same, with a very slight difference in the wordings of the objective o…
  • Case
    On-going

    Guest editors for single articles

    A COPE member has noted instances of journals contacting individuals - who are not on their editorial board - to request that they act as guest editor for a single manuscript. The invitation makes it clear that they are being asked to recruit reviewers and to make the editorial decision. This practice includes instances where the invitee has had no prior contact with the journal. C…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy

    The journal conducts double-anonymous reviews of all manuscripts submitted. As part of the decision process, reviewers routinely receive a copy of the decision letter, which includes reviewers’ comments. In the transition to a new editorial staff, a change to the email template inadvertently meant that the full letter was sent out, including the corresponding author’s name. Before this was disc…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct

    Regarding a submitted (but not yet accepted) paper from a scientific collaboration, one of the authors has asked whether an instance of academic misconduct or - for that matter - any non-scientific but rather unsavoury personal facts or accusations (e.g. a penal or civil proceedings) can be considered as a valid ground for requesting that the journal remove an author from the paper, as per the…
  • Case
    On-going

    Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript

    Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were high…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal

    Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Data availability for vulnerable populations

    A paper on a vulnerable population was published in a journal. The journal followed their usual procedures for processing papers on vulnerable populations, by requesting and reviewing further information on the ethics approval and consent procedures of the study (e.g.: recruitment procedures; blank version of the consent document participants read and signed; the study protocol that was approve…
  • Case
    On-going

    Duplicate articles due to DOI reassignment

    The editors of Journal C have found that 15 of their recent articles have been assigned slightly different DOIs in the Online First and the final issue versions. This arose from administrative problems with the publisher’s production process and has resulted in duplicated articles in both spaces, and there may be other duplicate articles due to reassigning different DOIs. The editors of…
  • Case
    On-going

    Dealing with cases with culturally offensive content

    Society journal X and propriety journal Y have received complaints regarding historic papers published in their journals (generating a lot of anger on twitter). The papers outline a practise the society (who had a historic role in its development) no longer endorse. The society has released an apology about their involvement with the practise, but the practice itself is not illegal (in the majo…
  • Case
    On-going

    Author accused of sexual harassment

    A reviewer for Journal X declined to review a paper as author Y has been the subject of a sexual harassment investigation. Author Y left the institute before the result of the investigation, thereby avoiding the outcome of the case. There is an academic loophole which allows those accused of misconduct to avoid any potential consequences by resigning before the outcome of the investigation, mea…
  • Case
    On-going

    Unauthorised reviewer challenges

    A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the submission…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Where should journals escalate serious concerns about an institution or institutional review board?

    A publisher received a submission to one of their journals that raised ethical concerns. The concerns were related to potential harm or undue risk for participants who may be vulnerable. The publisher reviewed the ethics approval statement, and the authors had met the journal’s policy requirements by prospectively obtaining ethics approval from their institution before beginning the rese…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article

    An opinion piece on a polarising political and technological topic was published. A discussion ensued on social media, and shortly after, the publisher received a formal complaint stating that the editor-in-chief of the journal, who had managed the peer review process for the manuscript, had a conflict of interest and should not have made the final acceptance decision. When the publishing team…
  • Case
    On-going

    Data integrity issues

    Several years ago, a third party contacted the journal with concerns about data irregularities in two randomised controlled trials published about 10 years ago. Both of the papers were published before the journal had strict requirements on data upload to a public repository and availability. The journal sent an initial email to the corresponding author of both papers (the same author fo…

Pages