- Event
ISMTE European Conference 2019
Chris Graf, COPE Past co-Chair, will speak at ISMTE's European conference themed "Working together through change". The COPE session, Change and constants at COPE, will look at new ethical challenges facing journal editorial and… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: December 2018
…Forum, and leading to presentation at the Sixth World Conference on Research Integrity in June 2019. For our “S” we’ll continue to encourage operational transparency from our members, working with organisations like OASPA, DOAJ, and WAME and with campaigns like - Case
Authorship dispute
A manuscript was published in journal X, submitted by several co-authors, including one of the editors in chief of journal X, Dr A (the article was handled by another editor in chief at the journal). Another researcher, Dr B, has claimed that this article should be withdrawn because it contains unauthorized data from him (Dr B). A few years previously, Drs A and B worked and published… - Case
Late introduction of an omitted author after online publishing
The corresponding author as well as the co-authors admit that they have omitted one author (author X) who was responsible for a major part of the work in their study. Author X insists on having full acknowledgment in the authorship line and would not be satisfied with an erratum. What should I do? Please advise also about whether author X will appear in different citation… - Case
Falsification of certificates of deposit of new bacterial species in culture collections
…happen again. He also indicated that one of his co-authors had been responsible for obtaining certificates for these strains but that this co-author had since left his laboratory and returned to his native country. He provided a contact address for this co-author. The editor-in-chief contacted this co-author and he admitted that he had produced the forged certificates in an attempt to expedite… - News
Facilitation & integrity: name changes
…request, and COPE had supported their position and suggested that a note mentioning the name change could be added to the article. The journal offered to issue a publisher’s note outlining the name change and noted that agreement from all co-authors would be sought before the change was implemented. The author expressed concern about the requirement to obtain approval by the co-authors; they… - News
COPE Forum: 9 September 2015
The next COPE Forum meeting is on Wednesday 9 September, 3pm–4.30pm (British Summer Time) at The Montcalm London Marble Arch, 2, Wallenberg Place, London, W1H 7TN The agenda and materials are now available to download (PDF… - Case
Authorship of a commentary
An associate editor invited a commentary to be written by one of the peer reviewers. When the commentary was submitted, the associate editor was a co-author. There could be the appearance of a conflict in the decision to accept the article on which the commentary was based if the associate editor is an author on the commentary. Question for the Forum … - Case
Author dispute over data presented in paper
…Committee. The first author says that these groups have accepted the reasons behind the discrepancies in the data. The Editor-in-Chief and the Publisher also wrote to the co-authors of the paper (four co-authors, excluding the first author and the corresponding author). Three of the co-authors have responded and state that they accept the reasons behind the discrepancy in the data produced in the… EASE/ISMTE joint meeting
COPE will be holding an interactive workshop at the joint meeting of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) and the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE). In this workshop, a number of cases based on real-life examples brought to COPE, and covering some of the most pressing problems currently faced by editors and journals, will be discussed. Co…- Case
An author plagiarising the work of the reviewer?
An author submitted part of his PhD thesis as a paper. The section editor of the journal asked the PhD supervisor to review the paper. This induced a very heated response from the reviewer who made various claims regarding the paper: The author does not credit one of the tests he uses in his work There is no proper acknowledgement of co-workers who perhaps should have been… - Case
Scientist reads published paper by former collaborators and claims co-authorship
The case concerns a paper we published, ahead of print, on the journal’s website on 5 October 2009. A week later we received a letter from Dr A who claimed that the authors had a major conflict of interest and implied that she should have been listed as an author. The paper we published is based on an idea which was tested in 2002 in Country P, and in 2004 in Countries Q and R. The authors of t… - Case
Author impersonating corresponding author without knowledge of coauthors
We received an article which was accepted and published after an uneventful peer review process. The article was apparently written by seven authors from two universities. As part of our routine processes, all co-authors were alerted to a submission via the email addresses provided by the submitting author. Some time after the article had been published, we received an email from the… - Case
Author did not see reviews or revisions to the manuscript and did not give approval for publication
…addendum following sight of the reviewers’ comments. We understand that this matter has also been taken up by the employing institution of the co-authors (at which the complainant was previously an employee but has since left) but do not yet know of any outcome. At the time, journal policy was for the corresponding author to sign an exclusive license form that stated “You hereby warrant… - Case
Compromised peer review system in published papers
…that the papers’ co-authors were not aware of this activity. Author A has agreed to retract published papers for which they admit to influencing the peer review process and we are planning retraction notices for these. We are now seeking advice as to what to do about the remaining published papers to which author A has not admitted influencing the peer review process. We suspect the peer… - Case
Supervisor publishes PhD students work
The PhD supervisor and a co-supervisor published a paper. The paper contained the work of a PhD student; approximately 90% of the paper was from the thesis. The PhD student found out when the paper was electronically pre-published. He contacted the supervisor. The supervisor’s first reaction was “How did you find out”? The supervisor did not want to include the PhD student as an author since… - Event
Research and publishing ethics: challenges and best practices webinar
…webinar is free for anyone to attend. Endorsed and sponsored by China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Taylor & Francis Group and Society of China University Journals are co-organising a series of Excellence in Academic Publishing webinars in the first two weeks of July, as the second part of their joint training program for Chinese researchers, reviewers and journal… - News
COPE Asia-Pacific Workshop 2018: Report
…href="https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/COPE_Preprints_Mar18.pdf">COPE Discussion Document on Preprints and invited the audience to contribute to the worldwide debate on the pros and cons of preprint platforms. Sharing the stage with John Inglis (co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv) and Sarah Tegen (Vice-President, Global Journals Development of the American Chemical Society, which co-owns ChemRxiv), Michael also took part in the panel discussion in the same… - Translated resources
Webinar 2020: research and publishing ethics challenges and best practices
…China Association for Science and Technology, Taylor & Francis Group and Society of China University Journals co-organised webinar The webinar 'Research and publishing ethics: challenges and best practices' was endorsed and sponsored by China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Taylor & Francis Group and Society of China University Journals who co-organised a series… - Event
EASE/ISMTE joint meeting
COPE will be holding an interactive workshop at the joint meeting of the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) and the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors (ISMTE). In this workshop, a number of cases based on real-life examples brought to COPE, and covering some of the most pressing problems currently faced by editors and journals, will be discussed. Co…