News & Opinion
Opinion / Indian university responds swiftly to editors' concerns
8/8/2011 9.19am by
According to Retraction Watch, Kalasalingam University in Tamil Nadu, India, has sacked a professor and revoked the registration of six graduate students in response to evidence from journal editors of data manipulation. The press release from the university notes that the university launched an inquiry after receiving letters and emails from the editors of Vascular Pharmacology, Life Sciences, and Experimental Eye Research.
Opinion / Can guest authors of ghostwritten articles be sued?
4/8/2011 10.32am by
Simon Stern and Trudo Lemmens (from the Faculty of Law, University of Toronto) discuss legal sanctions which might be taken against guest authors of ghostwritten articles in PLoS Medicine.
Opinion / New developments in citation information
4/8/2011 8.16am by
An article in Nature reports on new free-to-access tools from Google and Microsoft which enable researchers to analyse citation metrics. Google Scholar Citations and Microsoft Academic Search allow researchers to create their own citation profile and analyse citations to their work.
Opinion / NIH drops plans for CoI website
4/8/2011 8.09am by
According to a report in Nature, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has shelved plans to require institutions to create websites listing researchers' financial sources. Commentators have noted that this will make it harder to identify conflicts of interest.
Opinion / UK parliament report calls for research integrity officers at all institutions
28/7/2011 9.13am by
A report from the UK House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into peer review recommends, among other things, that all institutions should appoint somebody to take a lead in research integrity. This was one of the recommendations made by COPE to the inquiry. The full report is available here.
Opinion / Indian scientists call for research integrity organization
27/7/2011 4.36pm by
Scientists in India have called for a body to investigate research misconduct. See the report here
Opinion / More from the COPE retraction project
20/7/2011 4.01pm by
A second paper has been published from the retraction research funded by COPE. It used qualitative methods to examine editors' experiences of retracting articles. See Williams P & Wager E. Exploring why and how journal editors retract articles: findings from a qualitative study. Science & Engineering Ethics: doi 10.1007/s11948-011-9292-0. Available here.
News / eLearning course due to launch September 2011
19/7/2011 12.08pm
The COPE eLearning course on publication ethics is due to launch in September 2011. The course consists of eleven modules in total, four of which will be released in September. These are: An Introduction to Publication Ethics, Plagiarism, Fabrication and Falsification. The remaining seven modules will be released subsequently. For more information contact us here.
Opinion / Ethical concerns of peer reviewers
14/7/2011 3.04pm by
An interesting study published in Nursing Ethics by Broome et al examined ethical concerns of peer reviewers and discovered that these are not always satisfactorily handled by editors.
Opinion / Editor's dilemmas over non-repeatable research
13/7/2011 9.33am by
The New York Times (June 25th) reports on the difficulties for editors over whether to retract reports of findings that cannot be replicated and also the problems caused if journals are reluctant to publish confirmatory or negative studies.