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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 21–40 of 300 results
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    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…
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    Retraction of article and accompanying editorial

    The authors of a published article have asked to have an article retracted for internal policy reasons. However, we have solicited and published an editorial which accompanies this article and specifically references it within the text. We are unsure how to handle this. Question for COPE Council Does COPE have any policy or protocol for cases like this? …
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    Query about errata

    Your retraction guidelines include comments about corrections. They also advise that notices of retraction should be linked to the original retracted articles. But, it is not 100% clear whether notices of correction (that is, errata and corrigenda, as opposed to retractions) should also be linked directly to/embedded in the origi…
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    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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    Citing a retracted paper

    Our journal has recently retracted three articles after one author was found by their institution to have fabricated data and destroyed evidence. It appears that the one author acted alone; no evidence has been found of complicity by coauthors, and the institution found some evidence suggesting that the one author defrauded their coauthors. We would like to know whether future articles can cite…
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    Author with recidivist behaviour involving simultaneous submissions

    An author submitted manuscript A to Journal 1 and to Journal 2 in consecutive months, both journals published by the same publisher. The author had previously submitted another manuscript to Journal 3 and informed the journal that the paper had been already published by another journal when the proofs were received. Journal 1 and Journal 2 have decided to withdraw the manuscript.  Journa…
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    Enquiry regarding copyright/retractions

    A journal received a paper that had previously been retracted from another publisher’s journal as a result of malpractice in the peer review process (a result of reviewer/editor misconduct rather than actions on the part of the authors).  Having reviewed various sources of guidance, it would appear that there is some precedent for re-publication of retracted papers (suitably corrected or…
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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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    Retraction request after university investigation found no evidence of fraud

    Dr X claimed to have found fabrication and falsification of data in an article submitted for publication by Dr Y. Dr Y’s university investigated and found no evidence of fraud but a genuine error in the figure. Dr X provided more information and a further investigation was initiated. It again dismissed the complaint as unfounded. The paper was then published. Dr X is now asking the journal for…
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    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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    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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    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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    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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    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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    Query regarding a retraction

    A journal published a paper. Some months later, the author asked if they could change the contents of the paper. The Editor in Chief had some concerns with respect to some of the results and could not come to an agreement with the author. The author then requested withdrawal of this paper and asked that it be removed from the database. The author also accused the journal of being unethical.
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    Disputed change in authorship

    A case control study was submitted to a journal. It was subjected to the usual peer review processes. After the required revisions, the article was accepted for publication. After acceptance, the journal received a letter from the corresponding author (author A) with a request to add the name of a new author (author B). The journal declined, stating that it would be unethical.   The…
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    Conflicts of interest, corrections, and student research

    A journal usually publishes one student essay each issue. In a recent issue it published a student essay in support of a controversial but lucrative set of interventions. The paper declared no conflicts of interests and only listed two names in the acknowledgements section without describing their role in the manuscript.   The author had been studying an MSc when the first manuscrip…

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