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  • Translated resources

    El autor de un artículo rechazado nombra y critica de forma pública al revisor por pares: caso

    El autor principal de un artículo rechazado para su publicación identificó y nombró de forma pública a uno de los cuatro revisores durante una entrevista con los medios de comunicación tras publicar el artículo en otra revista. El autor dio a entender en la entrevista y más tarde en Twitter que el artículo había sido rechazado por la revisión de este revisor y afirmó que el revisor no había rev…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Deceased author

    After a manuscript was accepted, an author passed away before they could complete the conflict of interest statement and copyright transfer documents. The publishing company requires that all authors complete these documents prior to publishing. The other authors do not want to remove the deceased author from the manuscript. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Who…
  • 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…
  • Seminars and webinars

    North American Seminar 2019: Just ideas? The Status and Future of Publication Ethics in Philosophy

    At the 2019 COPE North American Seminar, Rebecca Kennison, from K|N Consultants, presented details of a project which  "seeks to foster greater awareness among humanities scholars and editors about ethical issues in philosophy publishing…. [It] acknowledges that research and publication ethics in the humanities are in many ways, and for good reasons, complex matters and that, unlike in t…
  • Case
    On-going

    Undisclosed conflict of interest

    We published two peer-reviewed articles—one protocol and one paper with the results of a comparative analysis comparing a group of people associated with a specific “complementary medicine health care organization” (CMG), with the general population, which concludes that the group has “unusual health indicators” (more favourable than the general population). The papers originally contain…
  • Discussion documents

    Handling competing interests

    This COPE discussion document introduces issues around competing interests/conflicts of interest and describes practical issues which might occur when handling cases. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate. Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests - COIs) may arise during research, writing, and publication processes, and can be briefly defined as being an…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author of rejected paper publicly names and criticises peer reviewer

    The first author of a paper rejected by our journal publicly identified one of the four peer reviewers for the paper by name. She did this during a media interview conducted after the paper was published by another journal. The first author implied in that interview and subsequently on Twitter that the paper was rejected because of that person's review and also claimed the reviewer did not reve…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author requests for certain experts not to be included in the editorial process

    A prospective author contacted the editorial office of a medical journal to request that an intended submission was not reviewed or consulted on by experts involved in a number of published guidelines on the topic of the paper. The author named some of these experts, which included members of the journal’s editorial board (including editor A). The author justified this request by explain…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Attempt to supress legitimate scientific results

    The journal is operated by institute A, and the editor is an employee of institute A. A manuscript was submitted late in 2014 by authors from institute B, a similar type of organisation in the same country. The manuscript was reviewed by two referees who both recommended publication following minor revision. One of the reviewers noted that the abstract contained a vague statement related to the…
  • Forum discussion topics

    COPE Forum 9 December 2015: COPE consultation/guidance document on handling competing interests

    Introduction Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests (COIs)) are ubiquitous. One definition is as follows “A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author disagreement regarding article corrections

    We received an original article which was accepted and published. The article was written by multiple authors from several centres, and the corresponding author undertook the task of standardising the content, making several corrections to the original text. The author proofs were sent to the corresponding author, who reviewed them. However, once published, one of the co-authors indicate…
  • Seminars and webinars

    European Seminar 2014: Conflicts of interest in medical publishing

    …Download presentation: Conflicts of interest in medical publishing (PDF, 1679KB) Conflicts of interest in medical publishing…
  • Seminars and webinars

    Asia-Pacific Seminar 2011: The range of conflicts of interest and how they should be managed

    …Download presentation: The  range of conflicts of interest and how they should be managed (PDF, 6750KB)…
  • Case
    On-going

    Editor as author of a paper

    A subject editor, who oversaw a manuscript, was invited by the authors to become a co-author after the first review round. After inviting the subject editor to become an author (and adding his name to the author list), the revised version of the paper was submitted to the journal. The authors expected that a different subject editor would handle the paper in the next review round. Howeve…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Confidentiality breach by an associate editor

    The authors of a manuscript sent an official complaint to our journal regarding a breach of confidentiality by an associate editor (AE). The authors had been informed by the supervisor of a reviewer of a manuscript. After submission of the review, the reviewer received a confidential email from AE asking whether the favourable recommendation made by the reviewer would have been different if the…
  • Case
    On-going

    Possible violation of the Helsinki Declaration on Scientific Research with Humans

    A manuscript underwent peer review and the resulting reviewer comments raised grave concerns about the ethical legitimacy of the study.The reviewer: questioned the authors’ impartiality, suggesting that there was an undeclared conflict of interest; raised serious concerns about the extent to which participants gave informed consent; strongly doubted that the…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Review of a book written by an editor of a journal

    Two scholars and professional colleagues, A and B, serve as co-editors of a peer-reviewed international journal. Editor A, who recently had a book published, has requested that editor B solicit a review of the book from a scholar in the field. Editor A would like this review to be published in the journal that they edit together. Editor B is concerned that this situation would put him in a situ…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Possible conflict of interest

    Our journal is attempting to encourage the adoption of a uniform standard for the reporting of population genetics data. As part of this, one of the editors of our journal has submitted a proposal requiring authors to submit their data, including raw data, to his own database.  While the intention is laudable, there would appear to be a clear conflict of interest. What can a journal do e…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest

    The editor in chief received a letter to the editor criticising a paper published earlier in the journal. The editor first told the author of the letter that he would publish the commentary after he had given the authors of the criticised paper a chance to respond. When asked by the author of the letter, he later added that he would also publish the letter if the authors failed to respond.…
  • Case
    Case Closed

    Submissions from members of the editorial board

    Our journal has decided that members of the editorial board are allowed to submit manuscripts which will undergo peer-review directed by the present or former editor-in-chief. It can be difficult, and I would like to present one example. A group of authors (including one member of the editorial board) submitted five manuscripts during a period of 17 days. The handling of some manuscripts…

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