- News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: April 2019
…/cope-digest-publication-ethics-practice-november-2017-vol-5-issue-11#story-3971">universities and research institutes recognise the same problems that traditional COPE members recognise (traditional COPE members being journal editors and publishers). We’ve learned what we need to do to promote integrity and ethics in research publishing most effectively. We have to stop imagining that acting alone is going to be helpful. We have to start… - News
Case discussion: Low-risk study with no ethics committee approval
…Forum case (11-16), a journal rejected a paper on an online questionnaire study for being unethically conducted despite receiving retrospective ethics approval. Advance ethical approval or official exemption is recommended for survey studies (highlighted in… - News
In the news: February Digest
…BioRXiv.org, a biology-focused preprint server, almost 2/3 from inception to 2016 were later published in peer-reviewed journals, the majority within 6 months of posting on the server. Upload rates are increasing (2,1000 per month), as are download rates (1.1 million in October 2018!). Preprints with most downloads are more likely to be downloaded in journal with highest impact factor. Seminars
…href="http://youtu.be/SPPdHJ_kByE">Watch presentation [11:59] Differences in publication ethics in Central and Eastern Europe — Professor Ana Marusic, University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia, and Editor in Chief of Journal of Global Health Download presentation [PDF 1285kB] |Watch presentation …- News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…href="http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/04/11/1078-0432.CCR-18-0227" target="_blank">http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/04/11/1078-0432.CCR-18-0227 The XPhi Replicabilty project will seek to replicate about 40 studies in experimental philosophy to estimate the replicability in this field that has methods similar to social psychology. In… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…retracted and this damaged faith in community-driven rapid review. This time, however, we seem so far to have avoided these reservations. The story started on 28 July when a research group from South Korea announced on the ArXiv preprint server that they had found a material which acted as a superconductor at room temperature [1, 2]. - Case
Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest
The editor in chief received a letter to the editor criticising a paper published earlier in the journal. The editor first told the author of the letter that he would publish the commentary after he had given the authors of the criticised paper a chance to respond. When asked by the author of the letter, he later added that he would also publish the letter if the authors failed to respond.… - News
In the news: July Digest
…="_blank">https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/ugc-move-to-thwart-pay-and-publish-trash-culture/story-AP0BFFrbNuL1mN5WNbgCjI.html Peer review An experiment on peer review conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School, found that almost 50% of reviewers of medical funding applications changed their own ratings… - News
In the news: February Digest
…scientific record is, to this editor, awe inspiring. https://retractionwatch.com/2020/01/02/nobel-winner-retracts-paper-from-science/ In other news The New York Times published an analysis by Dana Goldstein of 8 American History texts used by 8th and 11… - News
Case Discussion: Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript
…and reliable system for the peer review of data. Trevor Lane on behalf of the COPE Education Subcommittee Read Equal Opportunities Policy
…victimised or treated less favourably as a result. False allegations which are found to have been made in bad faith will, however, be dealt with under our Disciplinary Procedure (being reviewed).Common ethical and editorial dilemmas of author misconduct: how should we respond?
…"Evidence of misconduct" "Probably no misconduct" Not applicable 1997 16 11 0 5 1998 33 30 2 1 1999 27 20 3 4 2000 32 26 6…- News
In the news: August 2018 Digest
…="_blank">http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/07/26/open-science-is-all-very-well-but-how-do-you-make-it-fair-in-practice/ Research integrity British universities fail at research integrity self-regulationA report released July 11, 2018 noted that ¼ of UK Universities does not comply with the concordat to support research integrity released in 2012. This concordat tied loss of funding from agencies… - News
In the news: April Digest
…for their office for research integrity and the same number had published at least 1 annual statement by 2018. https://peerj.com/preprints/27622/ A Scientific Integrity Consortium of 4 US and 3 Canadian government agencies, 11 professional societies, 6 universities and 3 nonprofit scientific organizations developed a set of 2 Scientific… - Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } .embedtool .fluid-vids {position: initial !important} /*-->*/ The rise in the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the writing, creation and complete production of research papers has taken the publishing world… - Guidelines
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
…website. Organisational names should not be used in a way that could mislead potential authors and editors about the nature of the journal's owner. If a journal is affiliated with a society, institution, or sponsor, links to their website(s) should be provided where available. 11. Advisory body Journals should have editorial boards or other advisory bodies whose… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…pharmaceutical companies that fail to report clinical-trials results only or to register the trials at ClinicalTrials.gov. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-06801-7 In a study of the EU guidance to report trial results within a 1-year time frame, investigators found that only 11% of…