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COPE Members bring specific (anonymised) publication ethics issues to the COPE Forum for discussion and advice. The advice from the COPE Forum meetings is specific to the particular case under consideration and may not necessarily be applicable to similar cases either past or future. The advice is given by the Forum participants (COPE Council and COPE Members from across all regions and disciplines).

COPE Members may submit a case for consideration.

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Showing 61–80 of 780 results
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    Case Closed

    Critical comment and conflict of interest

    Journal A received an article by Dr X (Article 1) commenting on another author’s work (Dr. Y) which had been published in Journal A and another journal (Journal B) of a different publisher. Because the scientific arguments were involved, and because the articles being criticised had been cited many times in the literature, the Editors of Journal A rejected Dr X's request to publish the work as…
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    Should a journal disclose peer reviewer names?

    A journal received a manuscript in July concerning the conditions surrounding the ending of an individual’s contract of employment. Following peer review and revision, the manuscript was accepted and published in October of the same year. Two years later, the journal received a letter from a lawyer representing a client who was suing the former employer discussed in the article. The author of t…
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    Authors used pseudonyms on a published article

    A publisher has recently become aware that an article published in one of their journals two years ago uses pseudonyms instead of the real names of the two authors. Communication with the corresponding author has confirmed the use of pseudonyms. The corresponding author has informed the publisher that the authors used pseudonyms in order to obtain a fair review of the paper (the paper is in an…
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    Concerns regarding image manipulation and inconsistent figure legends

    A journal received a complaint from readership about manipulation of images of gels and also of some figures which had been published as part of a thesis with different sample legends. The authors were contacted to provide explanations for the observed inconsistencies. The authors provided full images and then an official expert analysis, but the Editor-in-Chief did not feel that these response…
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    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…
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    Reviewer anonymity in post publication peer review

    A journal with an open peer review process (names and reports published alongside articles) accepted an article after assessment by three peer reviewers. Two reviewers were positive and the third reviewer raised some concerns about the methodology. A revised version of the manuscript was published alongside the three peer reviewer reports and the authors’ response   After publicatio…
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    Retraction because of scientific misconduct even if the conclusions are sound?

    A journal was alerted to potential image manipulation in four papers published over the course of twelve years by the same corresponding author. The journal contacted the corresponding author who provided some raw data for some of the papers but not all of them, and was not able to explain the apparent manipulation (which included, in one paper, a duplicate image from a paper published in anoth…
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    A systematic review on a country’s health problem written by non-native authors

    Journal A received a submission which focused on a systematic review/meta-analysis of a health problem in a specific country. It was written by four authors who do not live in that country. In addition, none of the authors seem to have any professional affiliation with any institution or researchers in that country. The systematic review/meta-analysis was based on published references and did n…
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    Duplicate publication in multicentre consortia

    Two closely related journals received a series of manuscripts each based on descriptions of a complex medical procedure by multicentre consortia. At least three separate consortia submitted three separate papers. Each consortium included centres which were shared between the three groups and likely have the same patients/procedures represented in different reports.  For example: …
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    Author refuses to comply with editorial review prior to production and publication

    The Editor-in-Chief of a journal received a message from a corresponding author of a brief communication, stating that the proposed editorial edits were beyond typical formatting edits at this stage. They felt said many edits were not appropriate, would need further response and suggested holding this article (which had already been in process with the journal for over a year) for the next edit…
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    Unauthorised use of data

    A multicentre study conducted with a working group involving 38 centres was published in our journal. Author A was a member of one of the centres and was listed as the 13th author in the article. Another colleague (author B) who is not a coauthor and who works in the same department as author A, contacted our journal and claimed that the data from the centre used by author A in the study were u…
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    Registration of a randomised control trial

    Journal A received a manuscript—a randomised, controlled, double anonymous, parallel clinical trial. The manuscript was reviewed by two specialist reviewers who suggested acceptance after revision. One of the important points that was asked was to provide the “registration number of the RCT”. As our journal is a member of the ICMJE, we reviewed the instructions of the ICMJE and found that there…
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    Two cases of double submission

    Journal A is dealing with two separate cases of double submission: Case 1: Manuscript X was submitted to the journal. Two rounds of revision were suggested by the editor in charge, following comments by the referee, and an amended version was submitted. Following routine plagiarism detection checking, the editorial team found that a substantial part of the manuscript was similar to artic…
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    Controversy surrounding ethics approval

    Journal A received a submission in which the authors conducted a field experiment. The authors noted that at the time of the experiment, ethics procedures were being developed at the authors' institution (institution A) and as a consequence of this, different departments within institution A had their own ethics procedures in place. The authors noted that they followed the procedures of their d…
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    Author withdraws manuscript upon payment request

    We occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. We consider this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. We request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the a…
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    Misrepresentation of journal decision on social media

    An author submitted an invited paper to a journal and, after a double anonymous peer review, the decision on the paper was to request ‘major revision’. The author decided not to revise the paper, and therefore effectively withdrew the paper, based on disagreements with the reviewers. These disagreements were not discussed with the editor prior to withdrawing the paper. The editor replied to the…
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    Change of author affiliation

    The Journal received an article for possible publication with three coauthors listed. The article was initially reviewed and accepted by the editorial committee. Then it was processed under double-anonymous peer review policy. Minor changes were requested which the authors implemented, and the article was accepted for publication. Before final printing, one of the authors (third author, previou…
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    Late addition of new author to article

    Journal A was contacted by the sole author of an article that had been peer reviewed and accepted requesting the addition of a second author. The original author claimed that he had forgotten to include the co-author earlier. The journal is concerned about the risk that the new author has not done any work on the article and might get undue credit if their name was added. Questions f…
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    Wrong version of article published. Should we retract?

    The incorrect PDF version of an article was published together with the correct HTML, XML and EPUB versions. The variations between the PDF and other versions are language editing related, and do not affect the scientific value or scientific nature of the article.  Questions for COPE Council Given that two version of the article exists, should the journal retract th…
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    Should this paper be retracted?

    Journal Y received an original article for review, which was subsequently published online.    The editorial office was then contacted by Professor Y, not included in the coauthors’ list, who referred to research abuse in the article and requested its retraction. In particular, Professor Y presented a careful evaluation of the article available online, finding that more than half of…

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