- Case
Dispute over submitted comment and the right to be forgotten
Some time after publishing a paper, a journal received a comment highlighting serious issues with the methods reported, and claiming that the conclusions could not be trusted. The comment was 13 pages long and rather technical in nature, so it was peer reviewed. The journal contacted the authors to respond to the comment but they replied that they wished instead to completely rem… - Case
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
A journal published an article about clinical recommendations for a condition that supposedly was the result of a consensus between two scientific societies of different medical specialties. The article underwent peer review and no problems were identified at that stage. However, about one month after publication the journal was contacted by one of the scientific societies raising concerns that… Common ethical and editorial dilemmas of author misconduct: how should we respond?
…0 2001 39 30 9 0 2002 18 14 4 0 2003 22 15 5 2 2004 25* 17 7 1 Total 212 163…- Case
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
The director of a research laboratory contacted our journal regarding an article published earlier this year. The director claimed that the documents and data used in the article were collected at his research laboratory and used by author A without his knowledge and permission. At the time, author A was a visiting scholar at the director's laboratory. The director also claimed that auth… - News
In the news: June 2021
…misbehaviours. This article describes the work being carried out by the Centre for Journalology, which researches, teaches and performs outreach on metascience, the use of scientific techniques to study the research process itself. Intellectual Property A - News
Post-publication conflicts of interest
…href="https://publicationethics.org/case/undeclared-conflict-interest-0">Case 03-17: An editor was informed of an author’s potential conflict of interest after publication. The author had thought it was unnecessary to declare it because it had applied only during the research and writing stages. The editor planned to resolve the situation by publishing the missing disclosure as a correction. COPE Forum advised publishing an editorial on conflicts of interest to… - Case
Suspect author
…suspicions. Options for gathering more data include asking the original correspondent and the systematic reviewer to provide a more formal commentary, although we have not done that yet. Meanwhile, one of the editors has gathered data on all author A’s studies: there are 135 in which author A is the first author, reporting almost 12,000 randomised patients in 17 years. Most are with one of the same three… - Case
Professional misconduct of one author
We are a scholarly publishing platform. We have recently encountered a unique case in which an author wishes to be removed from a published article due to allegations that have been made in the public domain about the lead and corresponding author. The first version of the article in question was published in 2017, with subsequent versions. Since then, the lead author of the artic… - News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…Case summary Case 17-21 An article was submitted involving over 200 pregnant patients with a systemic illness (from 2010 to 2015) who were recruited and assigned to a control group or an active intervention group (of their systemic illness). The control group received routine antenatal… Projects Funded
…A report on this project will be published shortly. The abstract is available now (Download pdf 17 kb) (uploaded 13 May 2010).…- Case
Paper submitted for publication without consent or knowledge of co-authors
…received although they were copied in on the correspondence. On 14 December 2012, the publisher contacted CA directly, asking him for his point of view. CA replied on 17 December 2012. From his reply it was not clear whether he completely understood the situation. He stated that he had asked co-author A for permission to submit the article but “had no answer for one year”. He states that the… New UK Panel for Research Integrity
…instances occur. Project approval was granted through to September 2004. Professor Michael Farthing was appointed to lead the project on account of his expertise in the field and as former chair of COPE. One of the first tasks was to survey the membership to look at the nature and prevalence of research misconduct. Seventy per cent of the membership (86 members)…- News
Artificial intelligence in the news
…and we are now entering a phase of greater scrutiny and accountability. There are several legal cases open in the US and the UK challenging the use of copyrighted material… - Case
Unusually frequent submission of articles by a single author
A sixth year medical student, with expected year of graduation of 2013 (Mr X), submitted 29 original articles and 17 letters to the editor in the period February 2012 to October 2012 to our journal. This amounted to an average of five submissions per month. Mr X is an author and corresponding author in every article. Of these, he is the first author of eight original research articles and 12… - News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…Ethical Oversight The Science and Technology Committee of the UK House of Commons met on May 8, 2018 to discuss research integrity. The transcript and a video of the meeting is available on The… - Forum discussion topics
Author behavioural misconduct
…id="springer" name="springer">Marin-Spiotta E., et al. (2022). Harassment as Scientific Misconduct in: Faintuch, J., Faintuch, S. (eds) Integrity of Scientific Research. Springer Resnik D.B. (2019) Is it time to revise the definition of… - News
In the news: April 2020
…Diversity & Inclusion In a study of gender bias in 145 journals in various areas of research, including 1.7 million authors and 740,00 referees, these authors show that in biomedicine and health journals women authors were treated generally favourably by editors and reviewers. This is in contrast to social science and humanity journals. The authors advocate for… - News
Case Discussion: Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/research/data-sharing-policies-scholarly-publications-interdisciplinary-comparisons-2017" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">COPE-funded research on journal data-sharing policies across disciplines (presented at the 2017 Peer Review… - News
In the news: May 2020
…adhere to open science principles. https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coronavirus-article-free-access-doesnt-go-far-enough In early April, a snapshot of where COVID-19 related papers was being published showed that the main sources were preprint servers (17%), and traditional… - News
Case discussion: gift authorship
…ethical authorship policies, which propagates ignorance of publishing etiquette and journal guidelines. COPE Forum Case 15-17, Requesting authorship after publication, highlights the misbelief long-held by a research…