COPE policies
…amendments will be added here. Related content COPE position statements Page history Last updated 18 April 2023 Back to top…- News
When the peer review process goes sideways
…href="https://publicationethics.org/case/editor-and-reviewers-requiring-authors-cite-their-own-work" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">Case 18-03 describes a case in which a handling editor and a group of reviewers he or she frequently invited, regularly requested that authors added citations during revision to papers that the handling editor had co-authored. The editor and editorial board reviewed these cases and found that in many cases, the suggested citations did not… - News
FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…public government grants are questioned in terms of legitimacy of products of research Role of global university research rankings in adding to the pressure of publish or perish Recent discussion On prevalence August 10, 2018, The Guardian stated that “more than 175,000 scientific articles have been provided by five of the largest ‘predatory open-access… - Case
Attempted dual publication
The paper was withdrawn from both journals. The head of the institution formally apologised to both journal and gave sufficient explanation to make it apparent that a genuine mistake had obviously been made. He also added that he felt the corresponding author, as well as all the others,had learnt from this mistake. The breach of confidentiality was discussed by the editors of both journals… - Case
Duplicate publication in a foreign language
A published article was subsequently republished in a foreign language journal, with exactly the same results and text. Just a few extra references were added. The senior author had written to apologise for the foreign language publication, but argued that the second publication was a different paper. But the editor disagreed: the foreign language publication had not referenced the… - Webform
Registration for the 2023 COPE seminar, Publication Integrity Week
…members. After you submit the form below you will receive an email to confirm registration. You must be registered to attend a session. Registration is free. Shortly before each session you have registered for, you will receive an email from Zoom with a link to join the session. If any session becomes oversubscribed, you will be notified that you have been added to… - Case
Plagiarism of reviewer's work
Several Europe-based authors, including well known, respected and much published ones, submitted an essay for the journal's section on research methodology. We rejected it without external review as it wasn't making sufficiently new points. We offered to see it again, however, if it was revised and if it added some worked examples using this methodology within published studies. A year… - Case
Academic freedom
…paper to be published. Do journals have policies for publishing articles anonymously, or policies on what to do if political issues arise? A suggestion was that the article could be published with no author names, and a note added to the paper stating that the identity of the authors is known to the journal but have been omitted to protect the authors. The article could be updated later if the… Dealing with editor misconduct
Small group discussions Case 1: Adding references after final proof When their paper is published, the authors of a study are surprised to see that changes have been made that were not in the final proof sent to them before publication. A comment has been added to the introduction, emphasising a view contrary to the…- News
COPE advice to editors on geopolitical intrusions on editorial decisions
…reported on this, which followed an earlier report in Science. COPE has discussed the issue of geopolitical intrusion into editorial decision making on two occasions over the past year, most recently at the June council meeting. We agreed to clarify COPE’s position on this by adding the… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…This will be discussed at the start of the next COPE Forum on Monday 30 April 2018. Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member ofEditing of reviewer comments: Forum discussion topic March 2020
…--------------------------------- Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member or register as a non-member to post comments…Endorsement policy
…This policy describes the different types of endorsements COPE may agree to support, what COPE will not endorse, and how to make a request for endorsement. COPE is from time to time asked to endorse or support documents, policies or events produced by external organisations. This may include adding the COPE name or logo to a document or website,…- Case
Babies needlessly subjected to a painful procedure for research
…editors wrote to the authors, asking for elucidation and learned that the samples were, indeed, taken by staff when they were collecting another routine sample. The authors added: “We took the chance and asked parents for consent in taking a little more blood . . . our ethics committee would never sanction [the invasive procedure] in normal infants just for research. ” The editors then asked for… - Case
Wholesale plagiarism
…manuscript was identical to the published review, apart from the omission of one section and two figures. Indeed, the reference list was unchanged except that the one reference unique to the omitted section remained, although it was not cited in the paper, and one reference to an aspect of the new authors' work had been added at the end. Journal A contacted the authors, requesting an explanation for the… - Case
Late addition of new author to article
Journal A was contacted by the sole author of an article that had been peer reviewed and accepted requesting the addition of a second author. The original author claimed that he had forgotten to include the co-author earlier. The journal is concerned about the risk that the new author has not done any work on the article and might get undue credit if their name was added. Questions… Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making: Forum discussion topic November 2019
…comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member or register as a non-member to post comments…- Case
Duplicate submission of a paper
…the same paper. On comparing the two papers, however, they were not identical. They had different titles, and although the second one contained a very substantial amount of the same material as the first one, it added on a suggested solution to the problem. Neither the covering letter to the second paper nor the paper itself made any reference to the earlier submission. The authors were asked to… - Case
Authorship dispute
…acknowledgement. The editors asked if author A had sought agreement from author B concerning this change, and added that it was not journal policy to make these changes. The reply from author A included a long and detailed account of what was clearly a personal dispute that had developed between these two authors subsequent to submission of the manuscripts. The editors, however, decided to reinstate author… - Case
Duplicate submission to two journals and previous duplicate publication uncovered
…publication. The authors replied, apologising for the error, which had been due to “hurry and inattentiveness, ” adding: “that the predicament is entirely due to circumstances beyond our intention. ” They requested that the paper be withdrawn. An explanation for the previous episode of duplicate submission was not given, although they said that they had sent a detailed letter to the editors of both journals,…