- News
In the news: December 2021
…research data collection. It includes recommendations that, during research design, consideration should be given to whether gender questions need to be included and, if they do, nonbinary genders should be explicitly included. In this - Case
Simultaneous publication
…X was published in Journal A about 3 weeks before Paper Y. The two paper superficially do not look similar and Paper X contains results that are not in Paper Y. However, the two papers also contain highly similar results and make similar key conclusions. Truth be told, all of the additional results presented in Paper X were added during revisions. The authors of Paper X knew that Paper Y had been… - Case
What involvement should a journal have in a dispute about an article published in the journal?
…reached the point for the readers to judge the merit of the grievance or responses from the published comments. 5. I have given the reader the courtesy and opportunity to voice his/her view. Does the Forum agree with the officers’ advice and is there anything more I should do?… - Case
Data fabrication, lack of ethical approval, withdrawal of paper and publication in another journal
The Forum agreed that the editor does have a duty to follow-up the case, even though the paper was withdrawn from his journal. The editor should contact the ethics committee and/or the institution, and copy in the authors so that they are aware of what the editor is doing. The editor should send the ethics committee a copy of the paper and ask them if they approved the study. If they… - Case
Coauthor fails to respond to request to confirm coauthorship
…ethics safeguards (intended to prevent ghost/honorary authorship) into a weapon. We decided that it was reasonable for the journal to expect a coauthor to perform the straightforward task of confirming coauthorship, and that if that individual did not do so (for reasons of malice or not), they would forfeit coauthorship. We sent an email to the recalcitrant coauthor (we did not have a postal… - Case
Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication
…handling editors and reviewers). Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Should the editors offer the option of a revise and resubmit following a retraction?• If the authors do revise and resubmit, it is likely the paper will be accepted (as there is nothing scientifically incorrect with it) so there is a possibility that the journal will have a retracted paper and a published paper… - Case
Requesting authorship after publication
The case raises the issue of the role of contributorship. One solution in such cases is for journals to list the contributions of each author. When contributions are clearly listed on a paper, it sometimes becomes clear that some of the contributors do not in fact qualify for authorship, so this practice should be encouraged by journals. COPE has produced a discussion document on ‘ - Case
Service evaluation as research in a controversial area of medicine
…publisher’s reputation. Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Should we allow data collected in service evaluations to be published as research articles? In medical journals, this is often seen as an acceptable exception; however, if research ethics committees are declaring a study "not research", should journals do the same?• Should the journal have posted a correction on the article… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar 2018: Creating and implementing data research policies
…(80%) or required a data availability statement (80%). Fewer had encountered mandatory data sharing (62%), data citation (40%), or peer review of data (38%). Related resources - Case
Authorship issue related to misleading action of one author
…lied regarding eliciting input and obtaining permission from the national agency to submit and publish the manuscript in our journal. Further, the second author had been fired from his job for “ethical transgressions,” and was now doing work completely unrelated to his previous job for the sub-contractor. She believed he had contributed little to the original paper. The first author has been dealing… - Case
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
…of the article in that journal versus the other publication (journal A). In answer to the final question, probably the only avenue is to contact the head of the Ministry of Health or perhaps the Minister of Health. Ultimately, perhaps this journal's author guidelines need to be strengthened regarding conflict of interest disclosures. Do the instructions include clear… - Case
Ethical conduct of qualitative research studies
…populations. The need to submit to an Ethics board unnecessarily is costly and can be a real barrier to non-HCP led research (e.g. patient-led research) who do not have access. Question for COPE Council Does COPE have any existing (or new) advice on the need for ethics committee approval for this type of research? … - News
New COPE members Jan-March 2019
…href="https://publicationethics.org/members/problems-and-perspectives-management">Problems and Perspectives in Management (Business Perspectives) Public and Municipal Finance (Business Perspectives) Revista Brasileira de Ciencias do Esporte (Elsevier) - News
Case discussion: self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
…salami publishing is found in a published article, what can the editor do? • Should the editor inform the other journal editor? • In such cases, should the article be retracted from both journals? Forum Advice and Follow-up The Forum cited the COPE/BioMed Central - News
Case discussion: repeated complaints about a review
…when peer review will be used and a limit on the number of rounds of responses. Some journals explicitly say they do not allow the formal correspondence section to be used to report possible errors. Reader correspondence relating to post-publication corrections should be investigated separately rather than immediately published. If appropriate and with consent, the reader may be acknowledged in the… - News
Artificial intelligence in the news
…literature. This is clearly of particular concern in subjects where public health, legal standing or finance is a concern. There are also potential issues for editors in detecting the use of AI if authors do not declare it: OpenAI is working on a watermark for outputs generated by… Outcomes of editors' attempts to investigate research misconduct
Liz Wager, Publications Consultant for Sideview and member of COPE Education Sub-Committee and BMJ Ethics Committee When editors do decide to take action in cases of suspected research misconduct, just how successful are they? In a bid to find out, I looked at those cases published in the COPE reports (1998-2003) where editors…- News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute
…a regional or national authority. The editor’s primary responsibility is to ensure the integrity of the scientific literature, which gives editors and publishers the authority to do what is required to uphold public trust in the science. Charon Pierson on behalf of the COPE Education Subcommittee… - News
In the news: December 2020
…Comment from the Editor of Digest: as an editorial aside, I have struggled with this concept. There is persistent evidence of bias against authors from under-represented racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identity groups in publications. How do we gain the trust of authors that providing this demographic information will be used to increase diversity, and not perpetuate the biases? For… - News
In the news: March 2021
…who have changed their name, this essentially makes public their status and can result in either an unwillingness to acknowledge their prior work, difficult conversations if they do successfully acknowledge a name change, or stigma and prejudice. Many journals have now adopted