- CaseOn-going
Simultaneous submission without aiming at duplicate publication
An invite for a review was made by journal A. The first revision was done six months after submission, and the second revision two months later. Three weeks after submission of the second revision, the editor’s decision was minor revision. At this point, the corresponding author, author X, informed the editor of journal A that the authors were reluctant to respond to the comments of the second… - Translated resources
Proceso de revisión por pares comprometido en artículos publicados: caso
Al percatarse de un alto volumen de envíos del autor A, el editor X mostró su preocupación sobre los revisores sugeridos por el autor y sus comentarios. El autor A había sugerido en la mayoría de los casos los mismos revisores para todos los envíos, los revisores sugeridos tenían direcciones de correo electrónico imposibles de verificar, los comentarios se devolvían muy rápido (en 24 horas) y e… - CaseOn-going
How to respond to a reader's repeated concerns
A meta-analysis was published in a journal ahead of print, and then subsequently in print. Several months later, the journal was contacted by a faculty member at a university not connected with the study. The reader outlined three general concerns with the meta-analysis. The concerns were discussed by the editorial team, including the statistical editor, and it was decided that the overall resu… - Discussion documents
COPE Forum 4 September 2020: paper mills
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills” Increasingly, across the research publishing landscape, publishers are seeing large scale manipulation of the publication process. The production of fraudulent papers at scale via alleged ‘paper mills’ is one such manipulation. Paper mills are profit oriented, unofficial and po… - CaseCase Closed
Author admits failure to credit other authors
An author submitted a manuscript and stated that he was the sole author. The manuscript received a favourable peer review and eventually was accepted. Some time after the article was published, a co-author told the author to contact the journal to correct the author list. The author of record (AOR) did this and supplied co-author names to the journal. The editor worked with the author… - CaseOn-going
Allegations related to multiple papers and journals
A publisher is responding to allegations about a particular group of authors. The complainants have accused this group of authors of wide scale research fabrication and misconduct, relating to a large number of their papers across many different journals (published by a variety of publishers). The publisher and the journals that are investigating and responding to these claims have refer… - CaseOn-going
Institution wants to retract despite ongoing legal proceedings
The case has been with two publishers for more than a year. Journal A at publisher A published article A by author A, affiliated to institution A and institution B (in another country), and author B affiliated to institution B. Journal B at publisher B then published article B, by the same authors and affiliations. The two articles are on closely related research. Shortly after publicati… - CaseCase Closed
Institution refuses to investigate scientific issues
A publisher was alerted to possible issues with band duplication in an article (more than 10 years old) by a reader. The corresponding author was contacted to resolve the issue. The author was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the bands, and because of the age of the article, the original data were no longer available. The institution was asked to investigate; a summary of the ca… - CaseCase Closed
Appropriate scope of review for retractions
An institutional review recommended retraction of certain works by a highly prolific and influential author who has since died. The institutional review focused on a relatively small portion of this author’s work. The institution recommended retraction based on deeming the articles unsafe and identifying several concerns, including that the articles' conclusions were implausible. As a pu… - CaseCase Closed
Authorship dispute during the review process
During the review process for a manuscript submitted to our journal, one of the reviewers alerted us that the manuscript appeared to be the work of a collaborator (Dr X) who was not listed as an author on the paper. It became clear that the manuscript’s corresponding author (Dr Y, affiliation A) was a postdoctoral researcher supervised by Dr X (previously at affiliation A, recently moved to aff… - CaseCase Closed
Removal of an author
A paper was submitted to a journal with authors A, B, C, D and E. The paper was peer reviewed. Before acceptance, the corresponding author asked for a new author, author F, to be added, and an existing author, author C, to be removed. The editorial office asked all of the authors (authors A, B, C, D, E and F) to complete a change of authorship request form and for the corresponding autho… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: Exploring Publication Ethics Issues in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
We set out to ask: •Are AHSS editors aware of COPE and how can we best communicate our services to them? •What issues are they dealing with that are problematic and what do they need in terms of support? •What is COPE not currently providing? Respondents were asked to report issues that were most widespread and frequent: 1) Addressing langu… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: Analysis of retractions, initiators and reasons for retractions
Session on retractions at the European Seminar 2019 chaired by Heather Tierney, COPE Council, with presenter Thed Van Leeuwen, who shares the results of a study of all retracted papers published in journals processed for the Web of Science (WoS). Thed Van Leeuwen describes the reasons for retractions, motivation for retraction and who retracts. Catriona Fennell gives the publisher's perspective… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: COPE retraction guidelines
Session on retractions at the European Seminar 2019, with speaker Howard Browman who shares a review of the updated Retraction Guidelines from COPE. During the session we also heard from Thed Van Leeuwen and Catriona Fennell. Links to their presentations are below: Watch now - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: Retractions, a publisher's perspective
Catriona Fennell, Director of Publishing Services, Elsevier gives a publisher's perspective, and shares her own experience, at this session on retractions at the COPE European Seminar 2019. Thed Van Leeuwen speaks about the scientometrics of retractions, and Howard Browman shares the latest on COPE's revised retraction guidelines. Watch now To hear Catriona Fennell's presentatio… - Research
Exploring publication ethics in the arts, humanities, and social sciences: A COPE study 2019
In early 2019 COPE, with the support of Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group), commissioned primary research with Shift Learning to better understand the publication ethics landscape for editors working on journals within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The research used a two-stage methodology: first exploring the issues qualitatively via two online focus groups with a… - CaseCase Closed
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
An article was submitted to our journal (journal A) in March. According to the journal’s working policy, the article was initially reviewed inhouse and comments were sent to the author. The authors replied to the comments but did not agree to the suggestion to convert the article to a short report. A rather impolite letter was sent by the author criticising the policies of the journal. We sent… - Case
Correcting the affiliation of an author after publication
A manuscript was published in our journal in 2015, and at the time of publishing (as now), the author was a faculty member of a university. The author's affiliation was not declared in the article, just the author's qualifications. Now the author wishes us to correct the paper and list her affiliation in the article. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Wh… - CaseOn-going
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
A case report was submitted to our journal (journal X) in February and accepted for publication in September that same year. In late September, the first author on the manuscript contacted us to inform us that this exact case report had just been published in another journal (journal Y) by some of his colleagues, including some of the authors of our manuscript. In the initial submission to our… - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2019: Ethical challenges in the arts, humanities, and social sciences
At the North American seminar 2019, Kath Burton (Associate Editorial Director of Arts & Humanities, Routledge, Taylor & Francis) presented the initial research findings and the solution put together on the back of some research conducted by COPE, supported by Routledge. The aim of the research was to better understand the publication ethics needs of arts, humanities and social sc…