- CaseCase Closed
Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript
An author submitted two manuscripts to our journal and the data were clearly fabricated, which was confirmed when we examined the original patient data files. The lead author admitted that they had only recruited a few patients and fabricated all of the remaining data and said that the co-authors had done this without their knowledge. We reported this to the institution, who conducted an… - Seminars and webinars
Australian Seminar 2018: Levers for transparency: from funding through research to publication
…At the COPE Australian Seminar 2018, Professor Ralph Horne, Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor for research and innovation at RMIT, presented on transparent institutions and the risks, challenges and opportunities that arise for institutions striving for transparency. Deborah Wyatt, the Vice President for society research publishing at Wiley, presented her principles for transparency in an evol… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar 2018: Creating and implementing data research policies
In July 2018 COPE held a webinar on 'Creating and implementing data research policies' moderated by Trevor Lane of Edanz Group and COPE Council. The guest speakers were: Rebecca Grant (Research Data Manager) & Varsha Khodiyar (Data Curation Manager) from the Open Research Group at Springer Nature; Todd Carpenter (Executive Director) from NISO, National Information Standar… - Research
Data sharing policies in scholarly publications: interdisciplinary comparisons 2017
Michal Tal-Socher and Adrian Ziderman, are the authors of a paper funded by a COPE research grant on the topic of data sharing policies in scholarly publications. Data sharing poster 2017 - CaseCase Closed
Potential figure manipulation with corresponding author uncontactable
A reader contacted the journal to raise concerns about a paper containing a potentially manipulated figure. The editor-in-chief agreed with the assessment that the figure had been manipulated and attempted to contact the corresponding author, without response. Following further contact with the co-authors and institution, it was established that the corresponding author had retired after public… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2017: Research data in the context of publication ethics
At the 2017 COPE European Seminar, Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Head of Data Publishing at Springer Nature, talked about research data in the context of challenges and opportunities for publication ethics. … - CaseCase Closed
Data manipulation and institute’s internal review
A 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… - CaseCase Closed
Author accused of stealing research and publishing under their name
We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student. Our journal is a fully English language publication and the accusing third party and author A are from a non-English speaking country, as is the student (assumedly). The accusing third party forwarded the… - CaseCase Closed
Data anonymity
A paper was submitted to our journal. The managing editor was concerned about patient information in the paper and queried the authors. The authors responded that the data were collected from routine samples and so consent was never obtained. The patients were lost to follow-up, and there was no ethics committee approval as it involved the study of existing data, but they did discuss with the i… - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum 12 February 2016: Data sharing
Data sharing is increasingly viewed as an essential step in improving research transparency and reproducibility (Taichman et al, 2016; Vickers, 2006). There has been a lot of discussion on the imperative for data sharing in the biomedical arena, particularly of publically funded research. As a result, there are many disciplines where proposals for data sharing are being discussed. Publis… - CaseCase Closed
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
Editorial office staff at journal A noticed possible image manipulation in two figures of a new paper submitted by author X. These suspected manipulations involved images of gels which appeared to contain multiple duplicated bands. This prompted editorial staff to look at the submission history of author X to journal A in more detail. It was found that author X had previously submitted t… - CaseCase Closed
Handling self-admissions of fraud
In November 2014, the first author of a decade old paper in our journal and a 15-year-old paper from another journal informed us that he faked the data in two figure panels in the paper in our journal and one figure panel in the paper in the other journal. The main gist of the manipulation was loading unequal amounts or delayed loading of gel lanes. Self-admission of data falsification i… - Research
Environmental scan of repositories of clinical research data: how far have we got with public disclosure of trial data? 2012
There is growing interest in sharing of research data, as data sharing is expected to accelerate research and increase accountability. Sharing of data underlying published research is an increasingly important consideration for peer-reviewed journals, and some journals require researchers to state their data sharing policy in published articles. However, the field of clinical trials has been sl… - Seminars and webinars
Australian Seminar 2014 Ethics of data publication: same or different?
…Download presentation: Ethics of data publication: same or different? [PDF,1192KB]… - CaseCase Closed
Institution alleges that paper includes fabricated data
In 2014 we received a communication from the Research Integrity Officer of an academic institution informing us that a paper, published in our journal in 2013, included falsified or fabricated data. We were informed that, following an investigation, they had determined that scientific misconduct had occurred. Within a few days we received a communication from one of the authors of the pa… - CaseCase Closed
Possible omission of information essential for conclusions in a research paper
In 2013, our journal published a paper describing an observational study comparing two drugs (A and B) for the management of a chronic disease over a period of 10 years. The conclusion in the paper was that mortality was higher in group A (97 deaths) compared with the other group B (52 deaths) (hazard ratio 1.76, 1.22 to 2.53; P=0.003). This analysis was done after adjustment for a large number… - CaseOn-going
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
In June 2014 we received a manuscript by four authors from a well known research institution. They described a randomized trial comparing a variation in a procedure with standard care. In total, 200 patients were randomized, 100 to each arm. As measured by an interview, patients undergoing the new procedure were statistically significantly more content than those in the control arm. This manusc… - CaseCase Closed
Image manipulation as a general practice
As managing editor, I view all manuscripts before they are assigned to an editor. Within a 4 week period, I have detected five manuscripts where photographs of either gels or plant materials were used twice or three times in the same manuscript. These manuscripts were immediately rejected. However, we are not convinced that these are cases of deliberate misleading of the scientific commu… - Case
Potential fabrication of data in primary studies included in a meta-analysis accepted for publication
Journal A has accepted a meta-analysis for publication. As is standard practice for many articles accepted in this journal, a key expert (Professor X) in the relevant field was invited to submit a commentary on the paper. Professor X expressed concerns to the journal that “we believe that some of the papers included in the review could be either fabricated or at best are heavily plagiarised”. T… - CaseCase Closed
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
The director of a research laboratory contacted our journal regarding an article published earlier this year. The director claimed that the documents and data used in the article were collected at his research laboratory and used by author A without his knowledge and permission. At the time, author A was a visiting scholar at the director's laboratory. The director also claimed that auth…