You are here

Home

Complaints and appeals

Journals should have a clearly described process for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher

Our core practices

Core practices are the policies and practices journals and publishers need, to reach the highest standards in publication ethics. We include cases with advice, guidance for day-to-day practice, education modules and events on topical issues, to support journals and publishers fulfil their policies.
Read more about core practices
News

Case discussion: repeated complaints about meta-analysis

Case: how to respond to a reader's repeated concerns

Summary

How to respond to a reader's repeated concerns

Case number: 
20-09
Case text (Anonymised): 

A meta-analysis was published in a journal ahead of print, and then subsequently in print. Several months later, the journal was contacted by a faculty member at a university not connected with the study. The reader outlined three general concerns with the meta-analysis. The concerns were discussed by the editorial team, including the statistical editor, and it was decided that the overall results of the meta-analysis were not affected. The complainant persisted in the critique, which was relayed to the authors of the original article. The first author provided a detailed response to the issues raised; the journal did not request an erratum at that time.

A discussion followed between the complainant and the editorial office about the extent to which the issues raised were errors or ‘a matter of opinion’. One error was clear and was corrected by an erratum. In the journal’s view, the other issues raised were open to interpretation. The complainant was invited to write a letter to the editor, but they declined and persisted that an erratum should be published or that the journal should consider retracting the article.

Because some of the points of critique were of general interest to the field, and also in an effort to resolve the issue of the continued critique by the complainant, the journal decided to publish an editorial comment authored by the editor in chief and the statistical editor. The editorial comment paraphrased the complainant’s concerns and added a few additional considerations relevant to the interpretation of the meta-analyses. The complainant was given the opportunity to review the editorial comment and the journal also asked his permission to be acknowledged for bringing the issue to the journal’s attention. The complainant gave his feedback, which was incorporated, and also his permission to be acknowledged. The journal also gave the authors of the original article the opportunity to respond to the editorial comment. The authors wrote a scholarly response and also provided re-analyses of the data when excluding the contested studies. The editorial comment was published, together with the acknowledgment, the author’s response and the erratum.

Before the publication of the editorial comment, the journal held a conference call with the complainant. The complainant had published a paper on a related issue in the preceding year, but the study published in the journal was different from the previous meta-analyses from the complainant’s own group. This had not been disclosed to the journal previously. It became also clear that the complainant had not contacted the authors of the article to share his concerns, and the journal encouraged him to do so.

Subsequently, the complainant raised new issues with the original meta-analyses, which they discussed with the authors. The complainant insisted that an additional erratum was needed; the authors of the meta-analysis are now preparing a second erratum. The complainant was again invited to write a letter to the editor, and again declined.

The journal is concerned that the second erratum will not satisfy the complainant and that this issue will not end unless the journal agrees to retract the original article. The assessment of the journal is that there are insufficient grounds to retract this article. One of the complainant’s recent emails to the authors says that they will contact the authors’ university and colleagues and the funding agencies that support the work of this research group about the purported errors made by this team. The complainant has also requested that the journal involves the publisher’s "ethical committee dealing with the publication process".

Question(s) for the COPE Forum

  • What is a journal’s responsibility to minimise potential damage that readers can do to the reputation of the author where the reader disagrees with the editorial team and the authors of the original article on whether an error has been made versus a difference in opinion?
  • What are the options for a journal to respond to (unreasonable) requests from readers regarding the content published in the journal and/or request to retract a paper if the editorial team considers the concern not sufficiently problematic to result in retraction?
  • What could the editorial team have done to better respond to the reader’s concerns?
Advice: 

The Forum noted that although it is honourable to want to protect the authors from this complainant, it is not the journal’s responsibility. The editor has a responsibility to protect the scholarly record, and to publish errata or retractions, based on the data and peer review process of the journal. In this case, it would seem that this is becoming more of a matter of a personal vendetta between the complainant and the authors. The Forum suggested that the editor could consider contacting the authors’ institutions and asking them to investigate.

The Forum mentioned that often journals encounter individuals who are persistent—they raise one issue, the journal addresses and potentially corrects the issue, but the complainant is not satisfied and refuses to accept that the issue has resolved. All journals can do is follow due process: the journal should have a process, have documentation of having followed that process, be transparent, and keep good records. Ultimately, editors have the right to decide what they publish, and the editor's and publisher’s decision is final. Has the journal communicated this clearly to the complainant? The complainant requested that the journal involve the publishers’ ethics committee, so the editor might consider this option, if an ethics committee exists at the publisher.

These situations can be very difficult for journals, especially with a persistent complainant. If the journal has completed its due process and determined that the article stands, with or without an erratum, then due process has been done. If the complainant comes back with new concerns or issues that were not considered or were not covered by the prior assessment, that might be a reason to look at the article again. But if they are simply reiterating the issues that were raised previously, it is reasonable for the editor to say they have already considered those issues and that the case is closed.

What is the journal's responsibility to minimise damage? The journal’s responsibility is to the content of the article. What the reader does external to the journal cannot be managed by the journal. 

Related resource

Case discussion: repeated complaints about meta-analysis a COPE Council member adds to the discussion of this case with further analysis and guidance.

Resolution: 
Case Closed
Year: 
2020
Classifications: 
Whistleblowers
Whistleblowers, responding to
Complaints and appeals
Journal management
Editorial independence
Editorial independence
Post-publication discussions and corrections
Correction of the literature
Correction of the literature, corrigenda & errata

Author displays bullying behaviour towards handling editor

Case number: 
20-08
Case text (Anonymised): 

A handling editor rejected a paper without review, after consulting with a senior editor. The corresponding author sent an appeal about 2 weeks later where he requested that the paper be given a second chance and be sent for peer review. He added that, in case of a new decision to reject without review, the editor should provide a detailed response to a number of questions and comments raised in the appeal letter. He also mentioned that, in order to illustrate the importance of the study, he had done a social media poll asking whether the paper in question was more relevant to the journal’s readership than another paper whose link he provided in the poll and that had recently been published in the journal. The appeal was also read by another senior editor and it was agreed to reject the paper again without providing any detailed explanations as the behaviour was considered borderline bullying.

Three weeks after the second rejection, the corresponding author contacted the journal expressing his disappointment with the decision and threatened a freedom of information request to access the correspondence between the editors that led to the editorial decision. Moreover, he suggested he would be writing about his negative experience with the journal.

The handling editor perceived this as aggressive and litigious behaviour and shared the correspondence with the head of the research section of the journal, who responded to the author and copied the senior author in the correspondence. The senior author responded by acknowledging the inappropriate behaviour of the author and promising to take action internally.

Question(s) for the COPE Forum

  • Did the journal handle the case appropriately?
  • Could something else or something different have been done?
  • How can this type of situation be prevented?
Advice: 

The Forum agreed that the journal behaved appropriately and handled the case correctly.

In terms of what the journal could do for future situations, the COPE Audit stresses the need for an appeals process, and that the process is clearly described in the author guidelines or on the journal's website. The journal might wish to look again at their instructions to authors and include a statement about the editorial decision making process in the appeals process, stating that the associate editors make recommendations to the editor, if appropriate, and that the final decision rests with the editor. The journal might also wish to add prominently to the author guidelines that the deliberations and decisions are, in general, confidential, and that any specific enquiries would have to requested formally by a lawyer. 

The Forum suggested that in retrospect, perhaps the journal should have involved the other co-authors, given that it was the corresponding author who made the threats. It is possible the co-authors may not have been aware of the corresponding author’s threats. 

Also, with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible that after the author had done the social media poll, and was asking for more detail, it might have been possible to de-escalate the situation by giving more detail on why the appeal was declined.

Another suggested approach was to look at this from the point of view of a difficult personality with misdirected enthusiasm, someone who does not understand the process well, but is engaged and enthusiastic, who might respond to direction and education from the journal.

Follow up: 

The journal considers the case closed

Resolution: 
Case Closed
Year: 
2020
Classifications: 
Authorship and contributorship
Authorship
Authorship
Questionable authorship practice
Complaints and appeals
Misconduct/questionable behaviour
Misconduct/questionable behaviour
Misconduct/questionable behaviour (author)

We set out to ask:

•Are AHSS editors aware of COPE and how can we best communicate our services to them?
•What issues are they dealing with that are problematic and what do they need in terms of support?
•What is COPE not currently providing?

Respondents were asked to report issues that were most widespread and frequent:

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.4.1

In early 2019 COPE, with the support of Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group), commissioned primary research with Shift Learning to better understand the publication ethics landscape for editors working on journals within the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

About this resource

Author Developed by COPE Council with support from Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group) and Shift Learning
Version 1 August 2019
How to cite this
Exploring publication ethics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences: A COPE study 2019 https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.4.1 

Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works —
You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website: publicationethics.org

Full page history

  • 26 February 2020

    Update to the pdf re: subject areas included in the broad categories, and a category name. Changes as follows:
    Page 26: the Humanities category should include the subject Media, Communication and Cultural Studies (currently under Information Sciences on page 27)
    On page 27: As above, the only subject in the category Information Sciences should now be Library and Information Sciences
    On page 31: the category called Libraries and Information Technology should be Information Sciences (the n 22 is correct).
    FI, the numbers are correct, just the category subjects/ and name need amending.

News

Case discussion: Suspected plagiarism

Case 19-04 Suspected plagiarism

A single author submitted a paper to a journal. A similarity check revealed 48% similarity with another published paper. The published paper was by different authors—5 in total. The similarities between the papers were in the introduction, methods and discussion sections. The submitting author did not reference the published article.

At the 2019 COPE North American Seminar, Rebecca Kennison, from K|N Consultants, presented details of a project which 

"seeks to foster greater awareness among humanities scholars and editors about ethical issues in philosophy publishing…. [It] acknowledges that research and publication ethics in the humanities are in many ways, and for good reasons, complex matters and that, unlike in the sciences, there have not been  broad efforts... to make existing expectations and practices explicit and to develop shared best practices across various subfields and disciplines.'

About this resource

Full page history

  • 12 June 2019

    Added body text

News

Case Discussion: Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work

In this case, a staff member at a journal noted that a handling editor and her or his favorite reviewers frequently requested authors to cite the editor’s  and reviewers’ work in revised submissions. Once this was confirmed, the editor-in-chief consulted the editorial board who agreed that the requested citations were not scientifically necessary.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.24

A guide detailing the suggested approach to the organisation of the Editorial Office in order to comply with COPE’s Core Practices.

About this resource

Author Developed by COPE Council
Version 1 October 2018
How to cite this
COPE Council. General approach to publication ethics for the Editorial Office. Version 1. 2018 https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.24

Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works —
You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website: publicationethics.org

Full page history

  • 23 May 2019

    First version October 2018

Pages