- News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: July 2018
…talked about the value of research transparency (if it has any value) in the absence of properly described and completely reported research. For example, if you don’t know how an educational intervention was actually performed in a study, then what value is there in the article or the data from that study, even if it is made - Event
COPE Seminar 2021
…Members only) Ethical practice in research data publication - challenges, lessons and opportunities FORCE11 Research Data Publishing Ethics Working Group, in collaboration with COPE, is developing guidelines and resources to support journal editors, data repositories, and institutions in the handling of ethics cases related to research data. The resources… - Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
We are seeking guidance on the ethical issues surrounding drug/medicine use evaluation (DUE or MUE) audit cycles, particularly with respect to the publication of findings but also perhaps with regard to the conduct of these audits in general. DUE is a quality improvement activity that involves data collection and evaluation (usually by audit), followed by ‘action’ or intervention and a r… - Case
Disagreement between authors and sponsor
Our journal was contacted by a representative of a company following acceptance of a manuscript that was based on a clinical study sponsored by that company. Upon acceptance, the senior author had forwarded a copy of the manuscript to the company, who had identified some discrepancies between the data presented in the article and an initial report that had been presented to them while the study… - Case
Self-plagiarism of review article
A reader flagged up that a review article originally published in a journal X in April 2003 had subsequently appeared with a few minor additions and deletions in journal Y (our journal) in July 2004 and then in journal Z (of which the author is an editor) in September 2006. The authors on the paper are all from the same institute although with some minor differences between the publications: jo… - News
In the news: March 2021
…href="https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/embj.2020105889" target="_blank">way to promote accountability and transparency by authors. A 3-level self-evaluation of image reproducibility is promoted to avoid simple rule-breaking about images. Research integrity Equator Network has launched a Chinese EQUATOR Centre with the… - News
Paper mills in the news
…research investigators, and Retraction Watch to understand the scale of the problem. The report provides some definitions and characterising behaviours, considers what motivates authors to use them, and offers some recommended actions. In July, Retraction Watch highlighted the - Forum discussion topics
Claiming institutional affiliations
…that, to The Research Organization Registry. More guidance on affiliations would be welcome since it has become so important as an indicator of research output, quality, credit, and prestige. Further reading - 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
Data and reproducibility: The role of research institutions
…href="https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples" target="_blank">FAIR Data Principles -- making research data “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable”, it falls on funders, publishers, researchers and their institutions to establish practices and policies for the appropriate handling of research data. Research institutions -- as the home of significant research data production and management -- have a particularly critical role… - Case
Data fabrication, lack of ethical approval, withdrawal of paper and publication in another journal
This query refers to a clinical trial comparing two forms of treatment which has since been published in another journal. I originally received this manuscript in 2009. One of the referees alerted me to the fact that the data looked strange. Furthermore, the test and controls groups were perfectly distributed, which is almost impossible. Along with the usual requests for modifications, I… - Case
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
A short research article described a new method and tested the method, showing proof-of-concept that the method worked; the idea for the method is presented as the authors’ own. On publication, the paper receives an overwhelmingly positive response from the community. Shortly after publication, the editorial team is contacted by a PhD student and their supervisor who had published the id… Outcomes of editors' attempts to investigate research misconduct
…it up. When the editors contacted the author's institution in another, no reply was received, and in another they were given a brush-off, on the grounds that the author was no longer an employee so it was not their concern. Medical negligence Medical negligence made up 11 cases of which one was still open. It usually concerned…- News
Guest article: Avoiding predatory publishers
…because all the translations have been provided by volunteer researchers and librarians. Think.Check.Submit. exists because of the support of nine industry organizations - Case
Mislabelling/duplicate images
We were contacted by a reader who told us that he had spotted a number of cases of image duplication and mislabelling of fluorescent tags that had occurred over the past 4 years. These involved two papers published in our journal, and two other papers published in two different journals. The two papers in our journal were both reviews, and the one that had the most occurrences involved a poster… - Case
Inappropriate authorship on students paper
A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study which was a final year student's project was submitted as an original article to our journal on 30 April 2011. On initial review it was obvious that it was conducted by students and written by them, but the list of authors had the supervisor as the first author, followed by 13 students. The supervisor, who was also the corresponding author, wa… - Case
Meta-analysis: submission of unreliable findings
A meta-analysis was conducted of about 1000 patients included in a number of small trials of a drug for emergency management administered by route X compared with route Y. The report concluded that administration by route X improves short term survival. Chronology The paper was submitted to our journal in September 2011 and after peer review was retur… - News
Diversity, equity, inclusivity and accessibility: COPE commentary
…from 2-6 October. We will be releasing more details over the coming weeks, but in the DEIA session we hope to launch several new discussion documents on name change requests, historic content that is now deemed offensive, and author behavioural misconduct. These have challenged us to think deeply, sensitively, and collaboratively, and we look forward to opening up the discussion to participants.… - News
Case discussion: Consequence for dual submission
…submission”, or “simultaneously submitted” return fewer cases. Performing a Boolean search for ["multiple submission" + "questionable behaviour (author)"] returns 12 cases: the case under discussion and 11 others. Case discussion In COPE Forum… - News
In the news: June 2021
Each month, COPE Council members find and share publication ethics news. This month the news includes articles on intellectual property, preprints, peer review, and more. Data and reproducibility The Food and Drug Administration in the USA informed Accleron Pharma that…