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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 121–140 of 158 results
  • Case

    Plagiarism in a review article

    A review article was spontaneously submitted and sent out to three peer reviewers, which is standard practice for the journal. One of these reviewers expressed “serious concerns” about the paper. In a telephone conversation, s/he explained that the structure (headings, subheadings, etc), large “chunks of the text,” and most of the references had been plagiarised from a teaching syllabus that s/…
  • Case

    Attempt at multiple plagiarism

    In January 2004 a submission was made to Journal A from a laboratory in a different country. In April 2004 it was bought to the editor’s attention that the manuscript was a verbatim copy of a paper published in 2003 in another journal, Journal B. The only difference between the manuscripts was that the names and affiliations of the authors on the second paper were different to the first paper.…
  • Case

    Attempts to draw attention to potential duplicate publication

    A medical student brought a case of duplicate publication in two journals in the same specialty to the attention of an editor of a third journal. The article in Journal A was published in 1997 and the article in Journal B was published in 1999. The editor wrote to both journals and asked them to investigate. The editor wrote several times over two years before he retired. The editor received a…
  • Case

    Dual publication and attempted retraction by the author

    An author who published an article in Journal A at the end of the year wrote to advise that it would have to be retracted on the grounds that his PhD tutor, Professor X, had already submitted a similar manuscript more than a year earlier to another journal. In the absence of any contact from the tutor, the author had assumed that this manuscript had not been accepted and went ahead with her own…
  • Case

    Wholesale plagiarism

    A review article was submitted by three authors from three separate institutions to Journal A. It was sent out to two referees. One of the referees noticed an apparent similarity with a review published a year earlier in Journal B, but written by two completely different authors. An electronic copy of the published article from Journal B's website indicated that the whole of the submitted manus…
  • Case

    Plagiarism and possible fraudulent publication

    An article written by eminent doctors on a subject of great public interest, with implications for public health policy, was published in Journal A. They subsequently wrote to Journal A, indicating that an article had been published in Journal B, which heavily plagiarised theirs. The editor of Journal A wrote to the authors of the second paper, but has received no satisfactory replies. The seco…
  • Case

    Plagiarism and possible fraud

    The authors of a paper published in another journal wrote to the editor of Journal A, complaining of apparent blatant plagiarism of their work by N et al. , whose paper had been published in the journal earlier in the year. Further investigation revealed that the text of the two papers was almost identical. S et al. had used one drug and N et al. had used a different one of the same class. The…
  • Case

    Attempted plagiarism of a published report

    A review paper covering the prevention of a certain type of infection was submitted to Journal A. One of the reviewers identified that the paper was based word for word on a report that had published guidelines on the same area. The authors of both pieces are different. The only significant differences between the submission and the original paper were in the introduction and conclusion. The ed…
  • Case

    Extensive plagiarism

    An article published in Journal A in 2003 contains extensive, almost verbatim, unattributed quotations from an article published in Journal B in 2001. The editor asked a member of the editorial team to compare the two articles line by line, and there appears to be a high degree of overlap without any reference to the original article in Journal B. The authors of the article and the editor of Jo…
  • Case

    Unauthorised use of questionnaires

    A journal had two incidences in which a questionnaire was used in studies without permission of the originators of the questionnaires. Both manuscripts originated in different countries, and used different questionnaires. 1. A manuscript was submitted which addressed quality of life issues. The referees had various concerns about the data and methods, and the authors were invited to revise the…
  • Case

    Possible plagiarism and fabrication

    A group of six authors published a study in a peer reviewed journal, comparing the efficacy of the same class of two drugs (A and B) with a placebo and with each other. One year later the lead author of that study was searching in Medline for new evidence on the efficacy of drug A and found a study that had been published in another peer reviewed journal the year after his by three authors from…
  • Case

    Co authors’ unwillingness to support retraction of a review

    A review by three authors, with Dr X as the lead author, was published in Journal A. Five months later, the editor of Journal A was informed by Professor W that a figure in the review by Dr X had originally appeared in a research paper, co-authored by Professor W in Journal B in 1990. The professor also said that Dr X had published the same or very similar figures in journals C, D (research pap…
  • Case

    Consent from relatives for genetic tests

    A paper described a problem of two women who wanted their fetuses to be tested for a genetic condition, but where in both cases their partners had refused to give consent. Should the journal publish such a paper without obtaining consent from the partners? The editors think not, but the authors are unconvinced. … _ It would be impossible to completely anonymise the case even if mention was…
  • Case

    Plagiarism

    On review of a paper for Journal A, a referee recognised entire paragraphs of the manuscript from two published review articles that he himself had written. Both reviews were referenced in the manuscript with regard to particular topics, but the verbatim paragraphs were not attributed to the previously published reviews. The editor rejected the paper and pointed out the apparent plagiarism to t…
  • Case

    Difficulty in obtaining patient consent

    An article describing three similar cases was submitted to Journal A. The author was asked to provide evidence of the patients’ consent for their details to be used in the paper. The author replied that all the patients’ personal details in the report had been anonymised and that signed consent would destroy this. Also, two of the three patients had since died and correspondence could be distre…
  • Case

    Stolen data and omission from the authorship list

    An author wrote to the editor of a specialist journal, indicating that a paper had been published without appropriate recognition of himself as an author. In his letter he stated that he had contributed more than 50% of the cases reported. The first author had “not only stolen my data and published it without my consent, but also omitted my name. ” The editor has written to the authors of the p…
  • Case

    Plagiarism

    The reviewer of a paper contacted Journal A to point out that a significant proportion of a review paper, on occupational stress measures, was a near verbatim copy of a longer review in a journal of a different, though related, speciality. The editor of journal A confirmed this was the case. Not only were the descriptions of the measures lifted from the previous publication, but also comments a…
  • Case

    Anonymous case presentations (without patient consent) on a specialist society website

    A specialist society wishes to post “case of the month” on the society website. The society is not proposing to obtain patient consent from all patients, but will anonymise the case reports instead. It has been suggested a case might be anonymised by changing details including age, occupation, or gender. It has also suggested that there is often much to learn from patients who have died, from w…
  • Case

    Publication of dead patient’s name at the request of the family

    An author requested advice about reporting unusual ocular manifestations of a patient who died from a fatal injury. The author sought the permission of the family to report the case, but they also requested that the patient’s name be added to the report in her memory. The author has proposed to add the following in the acknowledgement section: “The authors are grateful to the family of forename…
  • Case

    Plagiarism in a case report

    The whole discussion section of a submitted case report was almost identical to the discussion section of a previously reported, similar case written up by another group of authors in another journal. The only difference lay in the patient details. While the other paper had been referenced in the case report, the authors of this case report had not indicated that the whole discussion was identi…

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