- 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… 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… - 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… - News
Case Discussion: Withdrawal of paper at proof stage
…pursued. The institution may be requested to investigate or review their training in scholarly publishing. The authors might confess that they plan to take their now-improved paper to a journal that has a (higher) journal impact factor. A previous case brought to COPE Forum (case 17… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 2: COPE commentary
…after the session this had risen to 6.17 implying that some of the apprehension is from worries about lack of knowledge, or feelings of isolation in being an early adopter. Knowledge, as those working in scholarly publishing know so well, is power. COPE made its own contribution to knowledge-building in a very popular session on Seminars
…_final%20%281%29.pdf">Download PDF of the seminar programme) "Weighed and Measured: How metrics shape publication (mis)behaviour The 2015 European Seminar and Workshop was held on Friday 17 April 2015 at the Representation of the State of Hessen to the European Union, Rue Montoyer 21, 1000 Brussels, Belgium Altmetrics in practice: where are they being used (and…- Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2021: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…Committee – 46 Reviewers – 26 Learned Society – 17 What action should be taken offensive or discriminatory content is discovered? The responses to this question are all in favour of directly linking a clear note or statement of concern to the paper. Retractions, expressions of concern and an Editor’s Note, are all typically directly linked to a paper, with notices… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…information sharing. The news spread globally in a matter of hours, very far from the experience of most preprints, and certainly from the 17 weeks (on average, and with considerable variation by discipline and journal impact factor) it can take for the traditional peer review process to be completed. This encouraged the authors in…