You are here

Case

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.

Filter by topic

Showing 101–120 of 780 results
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Request for addition of new authors

    A journal received an article submission from two authors. The paper went through several revisions over the course of a year, and was eventually accepted for publication. The authors were informed about acceptance and the paper was sent for copyediting. The editorial office subsequently sent the final version of the paper to the authors for proofreading.  On the same day, a request was…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Retraction notices: Who (if anyone) should be listed as author?

    Publisher A has been developing an internal publisher style guide for retraction notices, but has not been able to find any obvious industry best practice when it comes to whether retractions should have an author byline, and if yes, who should be listed. Some retractions have no authors listed; others give 'The Editors of Journal X' as the author byline (in cases of retraction owing to author…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance

    A journal recently handled a research paper related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper was deemed of interest and sent for external peer review. Because it accrued reasonably positive reviews it was scheduled for discussion at one of the weekly manuscript meetings where research editors and a statistician make final decisions on a number of papers. A few days before the meeting, it came…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Comments linked to retracted papers

    A journal has received comments linked to a research paper that later has been retracted. This has led to a debate over whether there should be some notification beyond the link to the actual retracted paper.  Questions for COPE Council Should the comments themselves be retracted?  What does COPE recommend? What do other journals do?  …
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Duplicate publication in a predatory journal

    A paper was submitted to a journal. While the paper was being processed, the authors contacted the journal and advised that a predatory journal had published the same paper without their permission (the authors apparently submitted it in error, then withdrew it, but the journal proceeded with publishing). The authors are currently pursuing a legal case against the predatory journal to have the…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Potentially fake academic affiliation

    Journal A published two studies from a group of authors from country X. The editor of journal A was contacted by journal B who had some concerns as they rejected a paper from the same group. The author did not respond well to the decision and repeatedly sent harassing emails to the editorial office of journal B. Journal B investigated the manuscript closely and found that:   The ad…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Does co-publication of an editorial constitute duplicate publication?

    A publisher co-published an editorial across its portfolio of six journals. Co-publication was clearly flagged in each journal.   Subsequently, there was a discussion on PubPeer on the editorials, with one comment suggesting that co-publication is the same as duplicate publication.  The publisher believes that editorials that do not report on the results of research and which…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Conflict between two authors

    An article was published in a journal. Seven months later an email was received from an author declaring that he was invited by the lead author of the article to help with statistical analysis and had made significant contributions to the paper. To his surprise, he realised that the article was published and he was not listed as a coauthor.   The editor asked the complaining author…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    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…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Ethical considerations in publishing conference papers

    Journal X has recently received two manuscripts, which were previously published at a conference, with DOIs and publisher information. They contacted the authors with our concerns. Author A's manuscript was taken verbatim from their conference paper, yet they insisted that they own the copyright of the conference paper. They claim that they are free to re-submit the paper to Journal X, b…
  • Case
    On-going

    Ethical approval requirements for case study reports

    We have noticed a lot of variety in the way that ethical approval for Case Reports are published in different journals. For example, some state that the study was determined not to require Ethics Committee (EC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) review especially if it was a retrospective review. Others state that all procedures were carried out in accordance with approved ethical standards, g…
  • Case
    On-going

    Re-publication of peer reviewed articles as translations

    Journal A is planning on publishing translations of some of their articles, either in the publisher's national journal or in a web publication as popularized versions. Both are diamond open access journals which are indexed by DOAJ. One publishes in English, the other in two other languages.  Questions for COPE Council What would be good ethical practice for this?
  • Case
    On-going

    An unpublished PhD thesis included in an institutional library is submitted to an academic journal

    A manuscript was submitted to Journal A. A routine CrossCheck report revealed a 70% match to the author's PhD thesis. The journal recommended that the author expand the article with new content. The author raised an objection, arguing that the PhD thesis is not published in a journal, but is only included in the institutional library. The journal noted that related issues had been…
  • Case
    On-going

    Should we retract a published paper with a high similarity match?

    The journal published an original article in 2022. Recently, we received feedback from a third party that the paper is similar to the authors' other work published in 2019. The duplicate rate of the initial submission was 31% and the final version was 24% which is within the journal’s standard. The concern was that the paper may not add value as the authors have already published similar resear…
  • Case
    On-going

    Ethical conduct of qualitative research studies

    Publishers are seeing an increase in submitted data generated from qualitative research studies. These studies are answering important questions such as identifying unmet need or highlighting the lived experience, potentially adding real value to the body of evidence especially in rare diseases. They are often Pharma funded and / or patient advocacy group led. Many of these studies have…
  • Case
    On-going

    Excessive self-citation in a book chapter

    The case concerns an introductory chapter in a book. The publisher was first contacted about potential misconduct as part of a broader investigation into an academic who was a coauthor on an introductory chapter in a book. The publisher's subsequent investigation identified excessive self-citation in the work (one of the coauthors is named as an author on 12 out of 16 referenced works).…
  • Case
    On-going

    Undeclared author conflict of interest

    A journal published a study related to a pilot programme run by an online mental health support resource which, at the time of publication, had a for-profit spinoff. At the time of the publication, this resource would share “anonymised” user data with the spinoff to create and market customer service software. Although this practice of sharing data has since been stopped, the authors of the man…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author cannot be located

    A manuscript was submitted to a journal and after the review and revision process, it was accepted for publication. However, after the manuscript was accepted for publication, the coauthor stopped answering emails and therefore did not sign the copyright form, or affirm acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of authorship. The journal and production staff tried contacting the coauthor on…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Exposing citation manipulation and fraud in the community

    A publisher has identified a ring of three individuals who acted as guest editors for three special issues. These individuals used nine fake accounts to peer review manuscripts. For some manuscripts, the fake identities were used alongside legitimate reviewers, while in other cases they were used exclusively. The publisher has also identified several submissions to those special issues where th…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Sanctions for citation cartels?

    Multiple journals appear to be affected by a citation cartel between a group of researchers across three universities, via the medium of special issues. All articles within the issues contain a high proportion of citations to the same researchers at the three universities, many as high as 100%. Looking at the pattern of citations to these researchers' work, they have only ever been cited in the…

Pages