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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.

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Showing 21–40 of 776 results
  • Case
    On-going

    Allegation of authorship misconduct

    We recently received a complaint about an article which was published in our journal, which was originally sent to Journal X and copied to us. The complainant claimed that they had submitted an article to Journal X which was rejected. They alleged that their ideas and data had been leaked, stolen by another group of researchers, and published in our journal. We have asked the authors and…
  • Case
    On-going

    Submission of article by ghost author

    A corresponding author and two coauthors submitted a paper to our journal. The article was published after due process of reviewing etc. After publishing the paper, a student contacted us to say that the paper was totally derived from their Master's thesis. The journal's Research Ethics Committee heard the case and it was confirmed that the paper had been extracted from the thesis. All the auth…
  • Case
    On-going

    Possible image manipulation

    A whistleblower posted on PubPeer regarding some apparently overlapping images in an article published several years earlier. To the research integrity team there appeared similarities, enough to warrant a request for the original images / raw data from the authors. The authors said they no longer had access to the original data and have denied any editing was made to the images. We commissione…
  • Case
    On-going

    Can a published journal article be submitted to conferences?

    An article is submitted to a journal and accepted for future publication. The authors receive the acceptance letter and the script is waiting for the final publication process (within 4-6 months). During this time the authors ask the journal if they can present the full text of the article at a conference (which is going to be held before the publication by the journal). They also declar…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Request for a retraction from a pharmaceutical company

    A journal recently received an 11 page letter via email titled ‘request for a retraction’ from a pharmaceutical company (PC). They have issues with one of our critically appraised topic(s) which critically appraises two papers that were funded by PC and written by employees at PC. The two papers were published in separate journals.  Our critically appraised topic (CAT) was peer reviewed…
  • Case
    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

    Wrong article abstract published: corrigendum or retraction and republication?

    An author published an article in journal A. At the proofreading stage they were asked by the publisher to reduce the number of words in the abstract. After publication, the author indicated that they had inadvertently included the wrong abstract in the proofreading correction step, supplying one which belonged to another article they had authored. The article is now published with the wrong ab…
  • Case
    On-going

    Authorship dispute over image

    A journal published an article on a drug. They also accepted a letter questioning the method used for determination of particle size in the study.  The author of the original article claimed that the image used in the letter was theirs and asked that the letter not be published.   It appears that the two authors used to collaborate. The journal was unable to verify who produced the image…
  • 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…
  • Case
    On-going

    Image duplication

    The editor received an allegation of image falsification from a whistleblower relating to two papers published more than ten years previously (under the previous editor and publisher). A senior editor reviewed the allegations according to COPE guidelines, and decided there was evidence of image duplication. The allegations were then put to the author who was unable to supply the original data a…
  • Case

    Retraction or correction?

    A publisher received communication alleging that a published article in one of their journals contained large portions of text taken without attribution from another article. Upon review of these allegations, it was determined that a table in the article had been reproduced. In the table the authors did not put direct quoted material within quote marks or otherwise identify the quoted material…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Erratum query

    We have been notified that an erratum is about to be published on a Research article in Journal A, which is one of the key references supporting a Review article subsequently published in Journal B. All parties are agreed that the erratum (which corrects an oversight in reporting methodology) in no way affects either the data presented in the paper or the conclusions reached. Questio…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Duplicate publication

    We were made aware of a double publication in our journal dating from 20 years ago. A paper which was originally published in French in another journal the year previously was translated and published in our journal. The editorial paperwork is long lost, however, the principal author is a member of our editorial board. They readily responded and explained that it was not uncommon at that time t…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Withdrawal of an article

    We received a manuscript for consideration for publication in one of our journals (Journal A). During the peer review process we became aware that the manuscript had already been published in another journal (Journal B). When we asked the authors about this they said that they had asked the other journal to withdraw their manuscript before publication but this had not been done. We rejected the…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Inquiry concerning potential peer reviewer misconduct

    A journal received the recommendation of a peer reviewer which expressed doubts about the validity of some of the data in an article. The editor-in-chief got in touch directly with the author and mediated to have the data validated by an outside contributor. The authors responded by providing data validation by a colleague, who is now becoming a potential coauthor. The initial data were…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Editor adding reference to an author's work

    Several years ago Author A was asked by Editor B to contribute an essay to a publication. The book took a long time to complete and underwent many modifications. When the book was published Author A noticed that several edits had been made to the text without Author A being informed and which Author A did not approve. The most notable edit is an added reference to a piece of text. The added ref…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Letter to the editor and retraction notice

    A Letter to the Editor was submitted to Journal A – this Letter contained major criticisms of a paper previously published in Journal A, in particular of the statistical analysis underpinning the conclusions and the study design, and called for its retraction. The Editor sent the Letter out for peer review and some revisions were made by the authors. Based on both the content of the Letter and…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Questionable authorship information

    We have a paper in production that presents refutations of common criticisms made of a domestic cleaning or skin care ingredient.  The majority of the authors are scientific research officers of a firm that sells products containing the ingredient.  One other author is stated to be associated with a university but does not appear to hold a PhD.  It is stated in the corrected proofs that this in…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author

    In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    How to deal with obvious but disclosed conflict of interest

    We are dealing with a paper which contains an obvious but disclosed conflict of interest. The paper has two authors who are company employees (one is the CEO). The study does not directly involve their product (a medical device) but does directly involve the assessment of the broader medical service which it supports. The results of their study are favourable toward the company. All company aff…

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