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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

Al percatarse de un alto volumen de envíos del autor A, el editor X mostró su preocupación sobre los revisores sugeridos por el autor y sus comentarios. El autor A había sugerido en la mayoría de los casos los mismos revisores para todos los envíos, los revisores sugeridos tenían direcciones de correo electrónico imposibles de verificar, los comentarios se devolvían muy rápido (en 24 horas) y eran, por norma general, breves y positivos, limitándose a errores gramaticales. Todos los revisores sugeridos se decantaban por la aceptación inmediata o sujeta a revisiones menores.

About this resource

Based on case 12-12 https://publicationethics.org/case/compromised-peer-review-system-publis...

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La oficina editorial tuvo conocimiento de una carta de decisión en la que un editor solicitaba a un autor que citase un artículo publicado por el propio editor. Una investigación en mayor profundidad destapó un patrón de comportamiento preocupante: el editor solicitaba en las cartas (incluidos también los comentarios de los revisores) que se añadiesen citaciones de sus trabajos en más de 50 casos, cifra que triplicaba el número de veces que el editor solicitaba añadir citaciones de trabajos en los que no aparecía como coautor.

About this resource

Based on case 18-03: https://publicationethics.org/case/editor-and-reviewers-requiring-author...

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News

Case discussion: repeated complaints about meta-analysis

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

Summary

Case

How to respond to a reader's repeated concerns

20-09

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.

Case

Author displays bullying behaviour towards handling editor

20-08

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.

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.

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  • 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.'

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  • 12 June 2019

    Added body text

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