- Case
Misconduct on a massive scale?
Almost five years ago two outsiders approached an editor suggesting that a large series of papers from a particular researcher, including some published in high profile journals, might be fraudulent. Those contacting the editor thought it possible that the patients described in the studies had never existed at all. Round about the same time a few papers from this author were circulating in the… - News
In the news: March 2018 Digest
…="_blank">https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41073-018-0046-2 and the authors wrote a blog about their experiencehttp://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2018/02/27/research-integrity-training-by-stealth/ Peer review - News
International Workshop for Journal Editors, Indonesia
Trevor Lane, COPE Council Member, was invited to represent COPE in two sessions at the 2019 International Workshop for Journal Editors in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. Held from 25 to 27 March 2019 and attended by chief editors of about 150 journals, the event was co-organised by the Indonesian Ministry of Research, Technology and… - Discussion documents
How should editors respond to plagiarism? April 2011
…Contents Aims and scope Background Introduction Types of plagiarism 2.1 Extent 2.2 Originality of copied material 2.3 Position / context 2.4 Referencing / attribution 2.5 Intention 2.6 Author seniority 2.7 Language Detecting and responding to plagiarism Screening for plagiarism Defining… Publication and research ethics related to geopolitical issues
…href="https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/latest/news/our-latest-statement-ukraine">Statement from Universities UK on suspension of a MoU sent to the President of the Russian Union of Rectors (RUR). Last updated on 7 April 2022 UKRI: UKRI’s response to the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine, 27 March 2022 Research Square:- Case
Author dispute over internal report
Author A was paid to facilitate a meeting and write a meeting report for internal purposes. He was paid to do this by author C’s company. The report was posted as a PDF on author C’s company website. No authors were listed on the report. Authors B, C and D co-authored an article that has been published in a journal supplement. It later transpired that the main substance of this journal… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: Exploring Publication Ethics Issues in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
… 4) 54% of respondents experience issues with the way authors receive and respond to criticism with 27% of them flagging this as a frequent issue. Editors reported feeling responsible for mentoring authors, such as encouraging them to keep revising manuscripts and to focus on constructive comments. They also saw themselves as mediating the relationship between author and publisher if peer… - News
In the news: April Digest
…target="_blank">https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00893-5?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20190328 Mark Israel makes important arguments that there are benefits, and in some cases it may be appropriate circumstances in which self-plagiarism in varying journals, countries and languages may increase access to research for people who are not Anglophonic. He provides advice on considerations when you might re-use text. - Case
Possible plagiarism
A Middle Eastern author submitted four papers on different subjects at around the same time (two single author, two with other authors). During in-house assessment, it was noted that two of the papers were very similar to previously published papers. Fuller inspection of the complete papers indicated unequivocally that plagiarism had taken place—in one of the papers even the figures have been c… - Case
Author creates bogus email accounts for proposed reviewers
Recently, as co-editor of my journal, I received a manuscript submitted for publication. The author had recommended two reviewers along with their Gmail accounts and affiliations. I was curious about the affiliation of one of the reviewers. I looked this person up and discovered they had a different email address than that provided by the author. So I usedthe email address that I found to… - Case
Controversy surrounding ethics approval
Journal A received a submission in which the authors conducted a field experiment. The authors noted that at the time of the experiment, ethics procedures were being developed at the authors' institution (institution A) and as a consequence of this, different departments within institution A had their own ethics procedures in place. The authors noted that they followed the procedures of their d… - News
Peer review resources
…href="https://publicationethics.org/node/34831">Chinese, and Spanish. Of the 27 COPE flowcharts, six relate to peer review: Peer review manipulation suspected during the peer review process - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: July 2021
…companies have simply shifted away from centralised offices. And yet, COPE’s work continues. I am pleased to announce that this year’s COPE Seminar will take place virtually from September 27 to October 1. The theme is “Together shaping the future of publication ethics”. Timely topics such as paper mills, data sharing, diversity,… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2021
…this area have evolved over the past three years. In the week following Peer Review Week, we are holding our annual COPE Seminar, 27 September – 1 October. Registration for this virtual seminar closes on 20 September, so please register now if you are… - Case
Sections of plagiarised text in an e-publication
An article was published online (e-pub), and a reader notified the editor about a section of the abstract that was taken from a review article published in another journal by different authors. Subsequent analysis of the e-pub manuscript found sections plagiarised from additional articles, often with citations but not quotation marks. Some sections were from manuscripts previously published by… - Case
Authorship dispute
Professor X claims that he should have been a coauthor on one of two peer reviewed publications and the senior author on the other. The situation is unusual in that Professor X is now retired and his name was omitted from coauthorship of both papers. Professor X argues that he should have been the senior author of the first manuscript since the funds to initiate the project were directly derive… - News
In the news: February 2018 Digest
…their services through companies like Devumi. The article is worth reading just from a social interest but imaging the impact in peer review publication is even more frightening!https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitte… - Case
Withdrawal of an article
We received a manuscript for consideration for publication in one of our journals (Journal A). During the peer review process we became aware that the manuscript had already been published in another journal (Journal B). When we asked the authors about this they said that they had asked the other journal to withdraw their manuscript before publication but this had not been done. We rejected the… - Event
COPE Lightning Talk: AI
…Marie was elected to the COPE Council in 2020. Dan Kulp, COPE Chair Dan fields the questions as we open the main part of the event to the audience. Dan has been in scholarly publishing for over 27 years, most…