- Guidelines
Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers
Peer review guidelines provide basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer review process in research publication. Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer-review process, but too often come to the role without any guidance and unaware of their ethical obligations. These guidelines are intended to be applied across disciplines. COP… - Guidelines
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief (EICs) regarding cases of suspected misconduct can play a significant role in preserving the integrity of the scientific record, allowing EICs of affected journals to conduct investigations with greater efficiency and effectiveness. This guidance has been drafted following a COPE Forum Discussion in 2013, and Discussion Document in 2014 on th… - Guidelines
Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases
Research institutions and journals both have important duties in the management of research misconduct and adherence to publication ethics. It is therefore important for institutions and journals to communicate and collaborate effectively. These COPE guidelines deal with the expectations and processes for communication. Ensuring research and publication integrity requires that institutio… - Case
Handling an undisclosed conflict of interest which is attracting controversy
In summer 2023, an author informed the journal that they had unintentionally neglected to declare a conflict of interest on all of the five articles that they had published in the journal between 2019 and 2022. They had been made aware of this on social media, in the context of a widespread movement to discredit members of an emerging healthcare profession that they represent. They stated that… - Case
Handling contentious authorship disputes
Recently we published an article online. A scholar wrote to us saying that their name is not included in the author list but that they had made contributions to the article. They therefore requested us to add their name to the author list. They are currently mentioned only in the Acknowledgements section of the article. We contacted the corresponding author of the article, who insisted t… - Forum discussion topics
Publishing when English is not your first language
…Experiences, challenges, possible solutions - Case
Is it possible for an article to have two corresponding authors?
Is it possible for a submission to have two corresponding authors (as the authors are requesting)? … Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individua… - Case
Late addition of co-authors
An article was submitted to our journal with two authors listed. Proofs were approved with these two authors listed. However, two months after publication the corresponding author claimed that the article had actually been submitted on the website with six authors. The journal considers the final list of authors to be those listed on the title page at the first submission step. The autho… - Case
How to exclude AI-generated articles
Recently, we discovered a potential problem with the use of AI-generated articles. We would like your advice on formulating a process to screen for AI-generated submissions. In the first review of an article, our EiC found that the author of the manuscript had no prior history of publication, and was connected with an AI website (found during an internet search). The article was not on t… - CaseOn-going
Authors request withdrawal of a 19-year old article
We have been approached by the authors of an article published about 19 years ago stating that they have found an error in a mathematical proof in their research. As a result, although the main theorem proposed in the paper should still be true, they would need to completely revise the text and intend in the longer run to find a new proof. They recognise that the paper as published cannot stand… - CaseOn-going
Correction, retraction, or expression of concern?
Recently, we received a review report from PubMedCentral for the indexing application of one of our journals. Reviewers pointed out several shortcomings of particular articles below: 1. Discussions that did not thoroughly address limitations, and conclusions that were over-stated and/or not supported by the results. 2. Methods that were not described clearly and in sufficient deta… - CaseOn-going
Stolen ownership of a rare case
A case report was published in our journal after being approved by a peer reviewer and subjected to a technical review. The first author was a post-graduate trainee attached to the department of pathology of a prestigious national institute. A month later we received an email from a resident working at a specialist department of another institute claiming that the patient belonged to them and a… - CaseOn-going
Publishing corrections for articles in inactive journals
Two articles published in 2006 and 2008 (by different author groups) had image integrity concerns that have been raised to the publisher. The journal verified independently that these image duplication concerns are valid and reached out to the corresponding authors first and upon not receiving a response subsequently sent emails to all authors multiple times. But due to the age of the pa… - CaseOn-going
Author contacts editor-in-chief using personal phone number
We have received in the past several bribe attempts from authors from an Asian country trying to publish articles in our journal, which have always arrived by email. However, the editor-in-chief of our journal recently received a WhatsApp message on his personal phone number from an author of that same Asian country. The same message was also sent by email to the official email address of the j… - CaseOn-going
Conflicts of interest between authors and editors
Recently, we have received a manuscript submitted by our Editor in Chief (EiC), with almost all of the Editorial Board Members and some of our authors of previous submissions as co-authors. In dealing with this we noticed that some of our previous published articles currently have conflicts of interest between the authors and the Academic Editor (AE). Our peer review policy states that t… - CaseOn-going
Retracting a 'Just Accepted' article
We are nearing the completion of an investigation into an alleged fraudulent special issue of one of our journals. Someone impersonated legitimate Special Issue editors and invited papers from legitimate authors in the community. We discovered this alleged fraud while reaching out to the people who were listed as the Special Issue editors only to find out from them that they had nothing to do w… - CaseOn-going
Same cohort - same blood samples - multiple tests
This is a hypothetical situation based on a real-life experience. A set of authors recruited the same patient cohort, collected data with two questionnaires, took one blood sample, but tests were done by two research students for two pathogens, and the results were presented separately in two theses. Subsequently, they sent different papers to two journals. No plagiarism has been identif… - Forum discussion topics
Ethical considerations around watchlists
March 2024 Ethical considerations of using and maintaining watchlists Watch the introduction to "Ethical considerations of using and maintaining watchlists" with Dan Kulp: - CaseOn-going
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
An article published in a journal in 2023 appears to have been plagiarised in a possible predatory journal but the publishers are unable to get a response from the predatory journal or affiliated Institute. The article (Article A) was submitted to Journal X in 2022 and published early in 2023. The authors reached out to the Journal after finding that another article dated from 2021 (Art… - CaseCase Closed
Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers
What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is…