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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 1–20 of 150 results
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers

    What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is…
  • Case
    On-going

    Concerns over the withdrawal of a complaint

    The journal received multiple complaints from two ‘whistleblowers’ in country A regarding the methodology presented in an article published in 2021. The Editors began an investigation into the paper, using evidence provided by the whistleblowers. The Editors felt that based on the provided evidence, an investigation should be carried out. The authors, who were also from country A, were made awa…
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    Case Closed

    Multiple complainants for a single article

    We received four letters of accusation on the same published article from 4 different email addresses (namely A, B, C, D) consecutively with the interval of each being 1 month.  The first letter of accusation identified several issues with the use and interpretation of statistics, and noted that no reference number was provided for the study’s ethics approval. In response the editorial o…
  • Case
    On-going

    Previous publication cannot be verified

    Publisher A received a concern suggesting that a coauthored paper published in one of their journals had previously been published by the complainant in an industry in-house journal (now disbanded). All three individuals had worked for the company which sponsored the in-house journal. The publisher asked for a contact at the company so that they could request information about their publication…
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    Case Closed

    Call for retraction of a commentary

    A journal received two emails from different individuals, both critical of a commentary published in the journal. One cited serious errors, the other noted inaccurate statements, incorrect literature citations and fundamental flaws regarding misinterpretations or over-interpretations which could affect public health. The second email also cited the potential for the commentary to be used for (u…
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    Plagiarism case

    Journal X was contacted by Author A, who claimed that a paper published in that journal ten years previously (by Author B) was plagiarised from Author A’s article in Journal Y published approximately ten years prior to that. Author A requested the retraction of Author B’s paper. Journal X has run plagiarism software on both papers to see the degree of text replication and it is not signi…
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    Image manipulation case

    A journal was contacted by a non-anonymous whistleblower pointing out problems with two figures in a published paper. The journal wrote to the authors, who provided them with films for the gels and an explanation and additional figure data for the histology image, where a mistake was made when assembling the images. The journal published an erratum and informed the whistleblower. Subsequ…
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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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    Case Closed

    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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    Case Closed

    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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    Case Closed

    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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    Publication of correspondence relating to a paper currently online

    A journal published an article discussing alleged partnerships between a well-known soft drinks brand and a number of health organisations in one particular country. The article was fully peer-reviewed prior to acceptance and now sits online in the journal’s advance access section of the website. A month after it appeared online, the Editor-in-Chief started to receive several written calls for…
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    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
    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…
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    Case Closed

    Publishing a letter concerning a paper published in another journal many years ago

    Recently, Journal X received a letter to the editor based on an article published in another journal about 8 years previously. The editors of Journal X believe this letter is important to their readers. The original article was a seminal paper which changed practice. However, a group of authors challenged some of the data published in this trial in a subsequent review published about 7 ye…
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    Case Closed

    Reader concerns about ethics approval and consent from a vulnerable population

    A reader raised concerns on social media about whether informed consent for research reported in a published article was obtained. An investigation by the journal resulted in the publication of a correction explaining that written, informed consent was obtained from the research participants.   A separate, small group of researchers followed up and raised further questions regarding…
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    On-going

    Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript

    Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were high…
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    Where should journals escalate serious concerns about an institution or institutional review board?

    A publisher received a submission to one of their journals that raised ethical concerns. The concerns were related to potential harm or undue risk for participants who may be vulnerable. The publisher reviewed the ethics approval statement, and the authors had met the journal’s policy requirements by prospectively obtaining ethics approval from their institution before beginning the rese…
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    Author displays bullying behaviour towards handling editor

    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 i…
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    Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work

    A staff member in our editorial office noticed a decision letter where a handling editor instructed an author to cite an article published by the handling editor. The staff member wondered if this had happened before and reviewed recent decision letters by that editor. This revealed a concerning pattern of behaviour—the handling editor’s decision letters (including reviewers’ comments) asked au…

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