- News
Survey reveals need for guidance on places to publish
…the top choice for just over 20% of respondents. ● There is still work to be done in building awareness of how Think. Check. Submit. can help researchers address this challenge; 34% of respondents had not heard of the initiative before completing the survey. ● The responses to the survey revealed a sense of community ownership about the initiative, in particular the willingness of many… - Event
COPE Forum: July 2023
…issue 4. Updates to cases Authorship dispute involving a commercial institution Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal - Case
Author’s name removed from submitted article
…involvement as principal investigator, yet the submitted study made no mention of his involvement or his name. In addition, person X alleges that he contacted the funders before he left the Trust and they agreed that he should remain the principal investigator. To complicate matters a little, the Editor had been asked to serve on the steering committee for the study3-4 years previously, and did attend one… - Event
COPE Forum: December 2023
…papers Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal 4. Updates to previous cases Multiple complainants for a single article - Event
COPE Forum: December 2022
…="https://publicationethics.org/case/temporary-exception-double-anonymous-review-policy">Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy 22-17 Open discussion Using guest editors for single article submissions 4. Updates to cases Members who have previously brought cases to the COPE Forum update us on their progress. 22-05 - Event
COPE Forum: March 2023
…a pharmaceutical company 4. Updates to cases Removing a retracted article from a third party site Author accused of sexual harassment - Case
Author retracts request to be removed from author list
…data and conducted the analysis. The third and fourth authors (Drs C of University 1 and D of University 2) aided in analysis and write-up. After requesting they be removed as an author, Dr A followed up 5 days later with a second email indicating they wished to withdraw the request. The wider context is that Dr B has been the subject of much attention in the discipline and the media for… - Case
Allegation of reviewer malpractice
A member of the editorial board of Journal A was approached by an overseas colleague with a strange tale. An epidemiological study had been conducted in the community around an industrial facility, funded by a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers. The study concluded that health effects in the community were related to exposures emanating from the facility. A paper based on the study was submitted to J… - Case
Competing interest
An editorial board member of a journal submitted an unsolicited review article on a drug. The editor said the journal would consider the article, but suspected that the article had been commissioned or even written by a drugs company. S/he stipulated that the author must provide a financial disclosure statement before the article could be accepted. The journal published the review article, whic… - Case
Authors used pseudonyms on a published article
A publisher has recently become aware that an article published in one of their journals two years ago uses pseudonyms instead of the real names of the two authors. Communication with the corresponding author has confirmed the use of pseudonyms. The corresponding author has informed the publisher that the authors used pseudonyms in order to obtain a fair review of the paper (the paper is in an… - Event
COPE Forum: September 2023
…by COPE Members for discussion at the Forum. 4. Updates to previous cases 23-02 Request for a retraction from a pharmaceutical company REGISTER… - Case
Authorship order dispute
…Drs C and E, with the oversight of Dr F as the head of department. Dr D is adamant that she should be first or second author on the paper (rather than third as she currently is), and said that she intends to block publication if this is not done, even though she has said that she will not work in academia again and is not interested in academic rewards. As head of department, Dr F is not… - Case
Journal refuses to correct the record
An author contacted our journal in August 2011 informing us that a paper he had published in our journal in 2005 had been published, word for word, in another journal (journal X), under a different title and author group, in 2007. We followed the appropriate COPE flowchart and contacted the editor of journal X. The editor of journal X told us in September 2011 that he would publish a ret… - News
In the news: March 2018 Digest
…target="_blank">http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192623318754792 While henceforth Nature journals will require authors to disclose non-financial, as well as financial conflicts of interest - News
Conflicts of interest focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/case/attempt-supress-legitimate-scientific-results">case 15-15), consequences of allowing a peer reviewer with a conflict of interest to continue reviewing a paper (case 10-34), and editors with conflicts of interest (e.g., cases 11-04 and - Case
License for using a published scale
…researchers to pay the fee (they have not told the researcher in question what the fee is yet, but through the internet blogs this seems to be a very variable amount). They have also sent emails to the president of the researcher’s university, deputy president and vice president for research, as well as to our journal where the paper is published. They are sending 3-4 threatening emails per day (although… - News
Guest editorial: Data availability statements
…inconsistencies within data sharing as a reason for retraction. COPE short survey on data sharing policies Please consider completing a quick survey to inform us further on opinions on this topic Related resources Retraction guidelines, COPE… - Case
Serial plagiarism by an experienced author
…or mean to do it and (c) he was very sorry and would not do it again. Dr J had made six other submissions to our journal, all of which had been rejected on the grounds of quality. iThenticate checks on these revealed similarity indexes between 66% and 77%. Typically up to three sources had been plagiarized to contribute up to 63% of the material. A search using Google Scholar identified that… - Case
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…As a consequence, it is conceivable that the authors have randomized 100 patients to each study arm during a period of 3–4 months. In his appeal to the rejection of the first manuscript, the senior author mentioned that the ethics committee had already expressed approval. And yet, common experience with randomized trials indicates that the present study would be an extremely fast trial regarding… - News
In the news: April Digest
…particularly from the global south, and to distinguish between low quality and “dodgy, fraudulent, pseudo, questionable, sham, illegitmate”, parodical and, my favorite, spoofy, journals. https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2019.34.e99 The US Federal Trade Commission fined OMICS Group, iMedPub LLC and Srinubabu…