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In the news: February Digest
…="_blank">https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2020/01/14/guest-post-i-say-tom-ay-to-you-say-tom-ah-to-bias-against-non-native-english-speakers-in-scholarly-communications/ Data science Dr. Xiao-Li Meng, Professor of Statistics at Harvard and Editor-in-Chief of Harvard Data Science Review was interviewed by Roger Schonfeld about data science and its growing role in research, education and daily life. - News
Comments please: framework for editors when requesting patient consent for publication in small cohort studies
…style="margin-left:.75in;">1. In the case the study comprises a small data set of patients (<1 but fewer than n=20), either from a single cohort or a hospital institutional database, and at least two or more patient identifiers such as age and gender, age of disease onset along with disease characteristics are listed in a table. The first step is to check whether the paper has ethics approval for this research. Some… - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
… Proportional representation matching that of a discipline/community (21%) Equal proportional representation (12%) Other (4%), including:- substantial degree of non-homogeneity/heterogeneity- proportional representation at least matching that of the discipline/community- proportional to the diversity in published topics- integrity/competence/expertise is more… - News
In the news: June 2020
…COPE Council Member Rachel Safer Read COPE's June Digest to read the results of our survey 'Editing of peer reviews', the latest cases discussed at the June COPE Forum and a summary of the Forum discussion… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: June 2022
…pressures which drive young researchers to paper mills as an easy solution was especially eye-opening. There was also an informative presentation of the problems faced by publishers by Suzanne Farley, Editorial Director at PLOS. Her presentation on the large number of potential paper mill submissions clearly articulated the fact that we have little idea of the scale of the problem. STM and COPE have… - Case
Duplicate publication
…their institutions, raising the issue of the wider crime of fraud. _ Overseas regulatory bodies often don’t reply, perhaps because they are uninterested or feel it is not COPE’s business to investigate misconduct. _ Check the submission letter to see if all of the authors have signed it. _ The editor should present a fuller version of the case presented at COPE to the corresponding author and all… - Case
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…non-randomized status of their study and called for a randomized comparison. At the time we rejected the manuscript because we were not convinced by the non-randomized design of the study. The senior author appealed our decision saying that it was very difficult and almost unethical to carry out a randomized trial. We did not change the decision but I granted the author that we would evaluate and possibly… - Case
Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?
…via conferences is the norm; whole papers are submitted, and if accepted, become part of the publication record. In general, it is not a good idea to use hard cut-offs on plagiarism detection software, but rather to look at the areas of overlap for substantive or important duplications. Plenty of articles with 30%+ overlap are fine or easily fixed, and some severe examples of… - Case
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
…had been produced during a period of collaboration which has now ended. This may satisfy co-authors who are worried about being tainted by the behavioural misconduct. However, if this is felt to be beyond the responsibility of the publisher, the author/s could be encouraged to use tools at their own disposal, such as services which allow them to attach information to a DOI, or to use a commenting… Become a member
…therefore compiled a minimum set of criteria that journals will be assessed against when they apply for membership at one of our organisations. The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing describe these criteria, and we welcomeFORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: Issues related to papers submitted to “discussion” journals
…XXX.• OPTION BSubmission of rewritten manuscript for review, discussion, and publication in XXXD and XXX. If the editor and/or authors of a manuscript published and discussed in XXXD conclude that the manuscript can and should be re-written in a way which goes beyond regular revisions (e.g. addition of substantial new results, etc.), a rewritten manuscript can at any time be…- News
Data and reproducibility: The role of research institutions
….pdf" target="_blank">AAU-APLU Public Access Working Group, “Although there is general agreement about the value of increased public access to data, ensuring such expanded access will require a significant culture shift at universities and among their faculty, thoughtful and carefully crafted new government policies and practices, and investment in the infrastructure required to make data… - Case
The judgement of Solomon: a case of two strikingly similar papers
…of his paper. His case was that paper A reported a study that had been presented at a conference in April 2007. He thought that one or more of the authors of paper B might have reviewed his paper for the conference the previous November, and had used it to design an identical study. He claimed that paper B showed evidence of having been “rushed into submission”. We contacted the… - Case
Authors referring readers to an objectionable version of an article on a preprint site
…editorial decision and then remove it automatically. However, the issue may be discipline specific. Other journals allow postings to preprint servers at any point in the lifetime of a manuscript. Some authors like to maintain confidentiality and only post after acceptance and others even post upon publication, although these are in the minority. The advice is to be very cautious in creating… - Case
Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
…co-authored. In at least one case, an author did not add the citation of the handling editor’s paper as requested, so the handling editor returned the paper to the author again with the request that the citation be added. This created concern that he was requiring authors to add these citations before he would accept their papers. According to COPE’s ethics guidelines for peer reviewers, reviewers should… - Case
Retrospective registration, outcome switching and ethical approval
…declaration of the flaws of the trial procedures and protocol violations and selective and misleading reporting; which may well render the trial invalid or at least biased, and then providing a better and corrected summary table and narrative of what can be legitimately said. This is not ideal and will regrettably give the impression of insufficient rigour in the execution of a trial and the data still… - Case
Institution refuses to investigate scientific issues
The editor prepared an expression of concern for publication in the journal and is awaiting the authors’ agreement on the wording. Follow up (September 2020) The journal is about to publish an expression of concern. The editor did not hear back from the authors despite numerous attempts at contacting them. The journal considers the case closed.… - Case
Request to remove an author post-publication
…preferable to creating a ghost author, because there is at least some acknowledgement of the contribution of the author and transparency around the issue. To remove an individual from an article could lead to an inaccurate representation of the contributions to the work, may not align with the journal’s authorship policy, and could create issues in the future regarding accountability for the… - Case
Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article
The Forum agreed with the journal that post-publication peer review could be conducted. Authors are never happy to have their article peer reviewed after publication, especially if they are not at fault, but editors are responsible for ensuring that papers are properly peer reviewed. If an issue arises after publication, the journal has a responsibility to ensure that appropriate peer review… - News
When the peer review process goes sideways
…The editor in question resigned. Authors Authors often suggest reviewers for their papers. The topic of submitted manuscripts can be very narrow and it is helpful, at times, for editors to be directed to possible content experts.