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  • 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

    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
    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
    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

    Plagiarism and publication fee

    A journal’s editors were informed about a plagiarism case just before the last step in the volume publication process. The publication fee for the paper was already paid by the author and the author completed and signed the publication agreement in which confirmed the paper's originality. The author was informed of the plagiarism issue and also that the paper would be withdrawn from publication…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    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…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    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…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Corrigendum or erratum?

    The publisher of a journal has found a spelling mistake in a published manuscript (an abbreviation was explained incorrectly in the original published manuscript). Having in mind COPE's guidelines, "The term erratum usually refers to a production error, caused by the journal. The term corrigendum (or correction) usually refers to an author error", is a corrigendum the proper way to correct this…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Plagiarism and copyright of material without permission

    The presenters found an e-book where all of the 'chapters' comprised articles from different issues and volumes of their journal. These were used without the journal’s permission or any form of approval. The journal’s co-publisher neither gave permission nor was contacted. Also, no one contacted the authors of the articles involved for permission.    The journal is open access with…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?

    An article was submitted to Journal A for publication. According to the journal’s policy, the article was scanned using anti-plagiarism detection software, which gave a 17% similarity result. As the journal allows up to 20% similarity, the article was sent for peer review to two reviewers. One of the reviewers noted that the article had been published in a similar form in a conference proceedin…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Plagiarism versus questionable research writing practice

    The authors of a paper were asked to explain alleged plagiarism in a submitted and subsequently accepted manuscript. This was based on a Turnitin report showing 28% similarity between the submitted manuscript (Author B) and a previously published paper (Author A), and 37% similarity between a published manuscript (Author A) and a submitted manuscript (Author B). The authors came back with an ex…
  • Case
    On-going

    Re-publication of peer reviewed articles as translations

    Journal A is planning on publishing translations of some of their articles, either in the publisher's national journal or in a web publication as popularized versions. Both are diamond open access journals which are indexed by DOAJ. One publishes in English, the other in two other languages.  Questions for COPE Council What would be good ethical practice for this?
  • Case
    On-going

    An unpublished PhD thesis included in an institutional library is submitted to an academic journal

    A manuscript was submitted to Journal A. A routine CrossCheck report revealed a 70% match to the author's PhD thesis. The journal recommended that the author expand the article with new content. The author raised an objection, arguing that the PhD thesis is not published in a journal, but is only included in the institutional library. The journal noted that related issues had been…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author cannot be located

    A manuscript was submitted to a journal and after the review and revision process, it was accepted for publication. However, after the manuscript was accepted for publication, the coauthor stopped answering emails and therefore did not sign the copyright form, or affirm acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of authorship. The journal and production staff tried contacting the coauthor on…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    An ambiguous plagiarism case

    A paper was published in journal A. The plagiarism check tool did not show any similarity during the peer review process.   Some time after publication of the paper, the editor-in-chief was contacted by an author who had published a paper in journal B. They claimed that the paper published in journal A was plagiarised from their MSc research project thesis and asked journal A to ret…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Use of secondary data without proper attribution

    Journal A received a paper on a cross sectional study from six coauthors. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Two months later, a clinician contacted the journal and said that the material was taken from their thesis submitted to the same institution six years previously.    The corresponding author explained that the data were obtained from a large institution database and pro…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal

    Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On…
  • Research

    Paper mills research

    COPE and STM undertook a study with Maverick Publishing Services in June 2022, using data from publishers, to understand the scale of the problem of paper mills. The study also involved interviewing stakeholders - research investigators, publishers, and Retraction Watch.  All stakeholders believe that the issue of paper mills is a real threat to the integrity of the scholarly record. Col…
  • Seminars and webinars

    Seminar 2021: Authorship for sale

    …How do we deal with the growing problem of paper mills? The webinar panelists discussed the prevalence of paper mills, the systematic manipulation of the publication process by individuals or organised groups to guarantee publication, often through sale of authorship or manipulating article acceptance.  This session is one of 

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