How COPE will respond to a media enquiry
…Tips for journalists and press officers Provide as much detail as possible regarding the item or issue. Indicate if you wish to speak to someone or whether a response by email is acceptable. Contact us as far in advance as possible. All Officers, Trustees and Council Members are volunteers and located globally, so employment commitments or time zones may mean…- Case
Accusation of non-attribution of authorship
…complained that he had not been acknowledged as a full author and so could not use the publication in his CV. In response, the first author of the introductory article wrote an explanatory and apologetic email explaining how she had gone about writing these articles: "This process involved amending the article to make it suitable for national publication and writing a brief overview to accompany the… - News
New: COPE Audit
…that may need to be revised so that they adhere to best practices in scholarly publishing. Use the Audit as a checklist to formulate your journal's own internal guidelines and codes of practice, as well as to ensure you have robust and well-described, publicly documented processes and procedures. COPE Audit - Event
EASE virtual conference: Editors and editing in a time of crisis
…will be asking what have we learned, and what lessons can we take away to help us in the future? The programme has been developed to be as interactive as possible, so that experiences of editors can be shared, and the views of members exchanged.… eLearning
…Plagiarism, Falsification, and Fabrication - will be available on 21 October 2011. Other modules will be rolled out as they are ready. The eLearning package does not lead to a qualification but members who have completed the modules can print out certificates of participation. We are keen to receive feedback so please do complete the evaluation form at the end of the module. We will be updating and…- Webform
COPE authorship workshop 10 February 2021
…able to attend the workshop. You will receive an email to confirm your registration. A link to join the workshop will be sent the day before the event. If oversubscribed, a waiting list will be set up. We ask that you let us know if your plans change and you cannot attend so that we can allocate your place to someone else. Cases and workshop… - Webform
COPE authorship workshop 24 February 2021
…receive an email to confirm your registration. A link to join the workshop will be sent the day before the event. If oversubscribed, a waiting list will be set up. We ask that you let us know if your plans change and you cannot attend so that we can allocate your place to someone else. Cases and workshop format The - Case
Ethical approval procedural lapse
An observational study submitted to an institutional journal was sent for peer review. The authors were invited to submit a revision six months later. They did so, but had not responded fully to the reviewers' points, so they were asked for further clarification of their selection criteria, publication plan, and evidence of ethical approval. A paper by the same authors describing the same… - Case
Consideration of publishing raw data
…situation. Does anyone already publish anonymised raw data in their journal and, if so, how does one handle the ethics of such a publication: · Do you assume that the original ethics approval covers this new publication? · Do you require… - Case
Developing a procedure to deal with retractions
The Forum agreed with the proposed course of action. What is important here is that the case is flagged up as a retraction and so the reader is alerted to the situation. One suggestion was to ask the reviewer to write another, revised review. The section editors could also add a comment, so identifying the retraction.… - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum 9 September 2015: Who “owns” peer review?
…services like this as a way to regain control over their reviews and so may be keen to sign-up and provide their data. Journals, on the other hand, often conduct confidential review processes and wish to restrict the sharing of comments exchanged during peer-review. Academics may view services like this as a way to regain control over their reviews and so may be keen to sign-up and provide their… - Case
Erratum query
…the conclusions are unaffected. The erratum in journal A should be linked to the research article so that if readers should look up the article, they will see what has happened. So, the erratum only needs to be linked to the research article. The authors of the review article could also decide whether or not they want to submit an erratum to the review. But in this case, it would seem… - Webform
COPE integrity workshop 2021
…members. So join us for the workshop where we'll create an online environment for attendees to share ideas and experience, in confidence, and learn best practices. Workshop format The workshop will be online on the Zoom platform and will follow this format: we begin the sessions together then break out into smaller groups, each facilitated by a COPE Council… - Case
Consent to publication for case details, and potential for journal violation of patient anonymity
…outcomes in response to the experimental therapy, were detailed in the paper. The editors felt that sufficient details were included to potentially identify the patient, so as outlined in our editorial policies, we asked the authors to obtain signed consent to publication from the patient. The authors responded that they had attempted to remove all identifiers from the paper (although the editors… - Case
Retract, correct, or both?
…unfortunately, he did not tell us then, before publication, but contacted the corresponding author directly in an attempt to stop publication and had assumed it had been dealt with I asked him to check the data and he did so, saying that while they were not inaccurate or unreliable, they presented an incomplete picture and the paper ought to be considerably revised to incorporate other data and a fuller… - Case
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
…in their journal and will not be retracting the article. We asked the EiC for a rationale so that we have all the available information to determine our next steps. We have not received a response despite repeated requests. As we had confirmation from the authors’ institution and journal Y that ours was the original version of the paper, we did not feel justified in holding the paper any longer in… - News
Think. Check. Submit. Survey 2018
…href="https://thinkchecksubmit.org/" target="_blank">Think. Check. Submit. wants to ensure that the initiative is as useful as possible to researchers, librarians and others around the world so we invite you to complete this short survey about your experiences with Think. Check. Submit. and what would make the initiative more useful to you. This survey will be open until 28th September 2018 and should take about 10… - Webform
Registration for COPE seminar 2021
…registration. A link to join the session(s) you have registered for will be sent shortly before the event. If the event becomes oversubscribed, a waiting list will be set up. Please let us know if you are unable to attend so that we can allocate your place to someone else. Code of conduct Please read the - Case
Clinical malpractice
A case report was submitted in which the authors described a patient who had a poor outcome, and where many mistakes had been made during treatment. The authors of the paper were from a tertiary care centre. The poor practice had happened in a secondary care centre. One of the reviewers of the paper thought that the level of practice was so poor that action should be taken. The other reviewer… - Case
Editorial misconduct
…meetings and has threatened to have the associate editor sacked. Does this constitute editor misconduct and, if so, what is the course of action? Is there any ethical binding on the associate editor to have the matter investigated further?…