- CaseOn-going
Guest editors for single articles
A COPE member has noted instances of journals contacting individuals - who are not on their editorial board - to request that they act as guest editor for a single manuscript. The invitation makes it clear that they are being asked to recruit reviewers and to make the editorial decision. This practice includes instances where the invitee has had no prior contact with the journal. C… - Guidelines
How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers
…://publicationethics.org/news/case-discussion-inconclusive-institutional-investigation-authorship-dispute">Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute case discussion (March 2019), and the university perspective on the case (March 2019)… - Translated resources
Guías para la retractación
…de interés) que, según el editor, habría afectado a las interpretaciones, el trabajo o las recomendaciones de los editores y los revisores por pares. For the latest version (English language) of this guidance visit https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4. Related resources - Guidelines
Text recycling guidelines for editors
…href="https://publicationethics.org/understanding-text-recycling-webinar">Understanding text recycling, COPE webinar 2020 with members of Text Recycling Research Project Text recycling research project, COPE European Seminar 2019, with members of the Text Recycling Research Project … - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship
…="https://publicationethics.org/guidance/Case?t=&classification%5B%5D=2772&sort=score">Authorship cases discussed at the COPE Forum Responsible authorship WCRI 2019 - CaseCase Closed
Comments linked to retracted papers
A journal has received comments linked to a research paper that later has been retracted. This has led to a debate over whether there should be some notification beyond the link to the actual retracted paper. Questions for COPE Council Should the comments themselves be retracted? What does COPE recommend? What do other journals do? … - CaseOn-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An unpublished PhD thesis included in an institutional library is submitted to an academic journal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… - CaseCase Closed
Publishing a letter concerning a paper published in another journal many years ago
Recently, Journal X received a letter to the editor based on an article published in another journal about 8 years previously. The editors of Journal X believe this letter is important to their readers. The original article was a seminal paper which changed practice. However, a group of authors challenged some of the data published in this trial in a subsequent review published about 7 ye… - CaseOn-going
Author accused of sexual harassment
A reviewer for Journal X declined to review a paper as author Y has been the subject of a sexual harassment investigation. Author Y left the institute before the result of the investigation, thereby avoiding the outcome of the case. There is an academic loophole which allows those accused of misconduct to avoid any potential consequences by resigning before the outcome of the investigation, mea… - CaseOn-going
Data integrity issues
Several years ago, a third party contacted the journal with concerns about data irregularities in two randomised controlled trials published about 10 years ago. Both of the papers were published before the journal had strict requirements on data upload to a public repository and availability. The journal sent an initial email to the corresponding author of both papers (the same author fo… - CaseCase Closed
Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal
Our 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… - CaseOn-going
Publication of data without permission
A director of an institute in France has expressed concern about a paper published in our journal. One of the authors (not the corresponding author) of the paper, person A, visited his laboratory in France for 5 months in 2009 to carry out some work. The director says that some methods used and results obtained in his laboratory have now been included in the paper without his knowledge or permi… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…href="https://wcri2024.org/">World Congress on Research Integrity 2024 in Athens. CLUE guidelines and next steps Presentation… - CaseOn-going
Image duplication
The editor received an allegation of image falsification from a whistleblower relating to two papers published more than ten years previously (under the previous editor and publisher). A senior editor reviewed the allegations according to COPE guidelines, and decided there was evidence of image duplication. The allegations were then put to the author who was unable to supply the original data a… - CaseCase Closed
Exposing citation manipulation and fraud in the community
A publisher has identified a ring of three individuals who acted as guest editors for three special issues. These individuals used nine fake accounts to peer review manuscripts. For some manuscripts, the fake identities were used alongside legitimate reviewers, while in other cases they were used exclusively. The publisher has also identified several submissions to those special issues where th… - CaseOn-going
Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript
Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were high… - CaseCase Closed
Data availability for vulnerable populations
A paper on a vulnerable population was published in a journal. The journal followed their usual procedures for processing papers on vulnerable populations, by requesting and reviewing further information on the ethics approval and consent procedures of the study (e.g.: recruitment procedures; blank version of the consent document participants read and signed; the study protocol that was approve… - CaseCase Closed
Removing a retracted article from a third party site
Journal A published a case report. Following publication, the publisher of journal A was contacted by a representative of the individual depicted in the article stating that, contrary to what the authors stated in the article, consent was not given for the publication. The article was retracted and removed to protect the identity of the individual and all indexing sites were updated. The origin… - Research
CrossCheck guidance: an analysis of typical cases of plagiarism in different disciplines 2010
…this site http://www.zju.edu.cn/jzus/editorpaper.php: 1. Zhang YH, Jia XY. A survey on the use of CrossCheck for detecting plagiarism in journal articles. Learned publishing 2012;25(4):292–307. 2. Zhang YH, McIntosh I. How to stop plagiarism: blacklist repeat offenders? Nature 2012;481:22. doi:10.1038/481021a 3. Zhang YH,… - 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…