- Flowcharts
General approach to publication ethics for the Editorial Office
A guide detailing the suggested approach to the organisation of the Editorial Office in order to comply with COPE’s Core Practices. COPE has many resources to assist publishers and editors in making decisions about ethical issues in publication, including guidelines, - Flowcharts
English: all flowcharts
For ease of use, we have gathered together here all of COPE's flowcharts into one downloadable PDF file (18 pages): What to do if you suspect redundant (duplicate) publication (2 flowcharts) What to do if you suspect plagiarism (2 flowcharts) What to do if you suspect fabricated data (2 flowcharts) Changes in authorship (4 flowcharts) What to do i… - Flowcharts
What to do if you suspect an ethical problem
COPE's guidance, as a flowchart, on what to do if you suspect an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript. - Guidelines
Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct
…Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct Introduction This guidance has been drafted following a COPE Discussion Forum (4 September 2013) and - CaseCase Closed
Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
2018A 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… - CaseOn-going
Stolen article
2017At acceptance but before publication, we found article A submitted to journal A was highly similar to article B, published 5 months earlier in conference proceedings in journal B by another publisher. The abstracts were nearly identical, but the author lists and affiliations did not overlap. We asked the authors to explain this and they said article A is their own work, but it was inadvertently… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship issues from disbanded consortium
2017A manuscript was submitted to one of our journals in a special issue. The initial submission included 15 authors with 9 affiliations. The authors were part of a consortium which has now been disbanded. The manuscript was provisionally accepted for publication. At this point, three of the authors requested to be removed from the author list, citing irreconcilable differences with the corr… - CaseOn-going
Unhelpful institution report
2017An allegation of data fraud was not satisfactorily resolved by correspondence with the authors. We then went to the lead institution and asked for an investigation. Within 10 days we had a report clearing the authors, but interestingly using some of the exact same phrases the authors used in their responses to us. We felt that the report was too superficial and approached the other institution… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute unsatisfactorily resolved by institution
2017The journal was contacted with a claim to first authorship of a paper currently published online ahead of print. Print publication was put on hold pending the result of the investigation. The claim to first authorship was based on the claimant stating that they had obtained most results published in the paper during their PhD studies under the supervision of the corresponding author, and contri… - CaseCase Closed
Lead author of a research paper disagrees with content of a linked editorial
2017The author of an accepted research paper (that showed some benefits for a controversial treatment) contacted the journal shortly prior to publication of the paper. It is the policy of our journal not to share commissioned editorials with authors ahead of time. This author had, however, received a copy of the journal press release in preparation for a press briefing. The press release quoted sta… - CaseOn-going
Editor found guilty of research misconduct
2017A journal appointed a new editor-in-chief to their journal. He had previously been on the editorial board of the journal for 10 years and the editorial registrar for 5 years. During the handover period, it came to the journal’s attention that he was due to appear in front of a tribunal for research fraud. By agreement with the journal, he stepped down until the outcome of the tribunal, and the… - Discussion documents
Addressing ethics complaints from complainants who submit multiple issues. March 2015
Background On occasion a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. Complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these complaints turn out to be well founded, investigations should proceed as warranted. However, there are also cases where a complainant makes repeated allegations against a journal, editor, or author that… - CaseCase Closed
Submission of an already published case report
2017A case report was received at the journal. A covering letter was supplied by the two authors stating “Our work has not been published elsewhere and we have been actively involved in the preparation of the paper. No conflict of interest. Not published elsewhere. Patient consent obtained for case report and images to be published”. Originality is very highly graded in the referee’s marking… - CaseCase Closed
Is it plagiarism to use text verbatim from a manuscript review?
2017A commentary was reviewed by journal A and rejected. The paper was then submitted and accepted at journal B. Journal B published the commentary. After publication, a reviewer from journal A wrote to journal B with a complaint of plagiarism. Text from his/her review was used in the commentary published in journal B Question(s) for the COPE Forum• How should the editor of jo… - CaseCase Closed
Data manipulation and institute’s internal review
2017A journal received an enquiry from a reader stating that they had found some discrepancies in the spectra published in the electronic supporting information for a published paper. They suggested that the discrepancies would be consistent with the spectra being manually ‘cleaned’. If this were true, the characterisation and purity of the compounds reported in the paper would be called into quest… - CaseOn-going
Would the loss of a clinical licence in one country impact on the ability to do clinical work in another?
2017The associate editor of journal X identified author Y on a submission paper as someone who had lost their license to practice due to malpractice. As part of the settlement, author Y had agreed to refrain from providing services to patients. Author Y now resides on a different continent, and the study presented in the submission was apparently carried out in in this continent. There is no mentio… - CaseCase Closed
Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal
2016Our journal has been contacted by an author who would like to submit a review article. The author responded to a request for an invited review from a predatory journal without realizing it was a predatory journal. The author submitted the article only to receive an unexpected invoice and clear evidence of no peer review. The author investigated the journal and then realized the predatory nature… - CaseCase Closed
Suspected unattributed text in a published article
2016An article was published in July. In October, a corrigendum was published to correct large sections of unattributed text. Two weeks later the journal and publisher received a complaint from a reader who accused the author of the published article of using text from an unpublished collaborative manuscript on which the published author was participating. This participation on the collaborative wo… - Seminars and webinars
Can you spot a fake? The trends of fake peer reviews - Alison McCook, Retraction Watch
…Download presentation: Can you spot a fake? The trend of fake peer reviews [PDF, 848KB] … - Seminars and webinars
Who's reviewing the reviewers? - Kristen Overstreet, Origin Editorial, LLC
…Download presentation: Who's reviewing the reviewers? [PDF, 740Kb]…