- Discussion documents
Guest edited collections best practice
… Key points Journals and publishers should be aware that collections can expose journals to greater risks in terms of unethical behaviour and peer review manipulation that should be carefully considered before the start of these… - CaseOn-going
Author anonymity at the final proofreading stages
A newly relaunched open access, peer reviewed journal operates a double blind peer-review system. At all stages of the review, until the decision to accept has been taken, neither the author nor the reviewer can identify the other. The journal always uses at least two reviewers, who are also unaware of the identity of each other. After the author has been told that the article is… - CaseCase Closed
Dispute arising from peer review of a rejected comment and published correction
In 2016, group A published manuscript X in our journal. In early 2017, group B submitted a comment critical of the published manuscript. Following peer review, in accordance with the journal’s then active policy, the comment was rejected from further consideration. The policy allowed for the author of the original article to be one of the peer reviewers of the comment. The lead author… - CaseCase Closed
More than a breach of confidentiality?
A journal received two manuscripts on the same topic in short succession.Manuscript A was rejected after peer review; manuscript B, submitted a few months later, was accepted after peer review. When manuscript B was published, author X contacted the journal to express concern about similarities between both papers and the fact that the first had been rejected and the second accepted. The… - Translated resources
Qué considerar al ser invitado a hacer una revisión por pares de un manuscrito
Qué considerar al ser invitado a hacer una revisión por pares de un manuscrito For the latest version (English language) of this guidance visit https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.17 Related resources - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2019: Women also know history
Karin Wulf, Professor of History and well-known “Chef” in the Scholarly Kitchen introduced us to the terms “manels” and “whanels” (all male panels and all white panels) and provided some suggestions to help identify a more diverse group of experts from which to draw authors, reviewers, editorial board… - CaseOn-going
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the… - Case
Palestinian refugee conditions
A journal received a simple, cross-sectional survey of Palestinian refugees. The author was a Palestinian, employed by a charity and undertaking research based at a university overseas. The study contained new data and within the constraints of a cross-sectional survey seemed methodologically sound. The paper was sent to two peer reviewers with expertise in the area, experience in… - CaseCase Closed
Ethical issues of responding to government agency request for information
A journal published several articles, reviewed by reviewers recommended by the author, that were identified as suspect. After a thorough investigation, the journal determined that almost all of the peer review responses for these articles were fabricated - the result of identity misappropriation and fraud. The journal was subsequently contacted by two government agencies of the… - Case
The double review
An author submitted a review to journal A in February 1997. It was accepted for publication in November, after peer review. The same author submitted a review on a similar topic—sufficiently similar that there was substantial overlap of content—to journal B in September 1997. Journal B accepted it in January 1998, after peer review. Neither journal editor knew of the parallel paper. - CaseOn-going
Reviewer citation manipulation
This is a general scenario which has been observed in increasing numbers at our journal. We are finding that some reviewers provide a referee’s report which include a request to cite a number of papers, which on closer inspection are all authored by the referee. We would like to hear whether Forum participants have any policies or procedures for reviewers who are clearly manipulating… - CaseCase Closed
Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy
…conflicts of interest in reviewing the article. Any paused articles with a decision should be treated in the same way. When the papers are published the journal should consider including a notice stating that they have been through a single anonymised peer review.… - CaseCase Closed
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
An associate editor handling a paper for this journal reported to the editor-in-chief that he had not yet been able to recruit a single reviewer—all those who have been contacted had declined or not responded. The paper is in scope for the journal, it seems of reasonably quality from a brief read and the associate editor is appropriate; but this is a small and specialised field, and finding… - CaseOn-going
Reproducibility of methodology
…in the articles. The corresponding author responded with a clear explanation of how they implemented the study but concerns about how this would be reproduced by others persisted. Consequently, a post-publication peer review was conducted. Unfortunately, the post-publication peer review provided no comment on the energy healing methodology that was implemented. The reviewer focused only on… - CaseCase Closed
WAME case
…that editors should ensure ‘timely’ peer review but we have never attempted to define ‘timely’ – should we do this?… - CaseOn-going
Two reviewer reports contain a significant amount of verbatim textual overlap
…suggestion was to allow the reviewers to continue to review other submissions but to monitor and score them so that their performance can be tracked over a period of time. The editor might also like to suggest that they refer to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Polling the Forum audience in relation to who uses structured review forms and expects their reviewers to use them revealed… - 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… - Flowcharts
Systematic manipulation of the publication process
…manuscripts, such as a high level of similarity between manuscripts, suspicious data and figures, substantial revisions, including authorship changes, after editor acceptance; the peer review process, such as rapid review times, similarities in the content and format of peer review reports, suspicious email addresses. Investigating the identified issue should involve: … - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum 5 November 2018: Predatory Publishing
Predatory publishing is generally defined as for-profit open access journal publication of scholarly articles without the benefit of peer review by experts in the field or the usual editorial oversight of the journals in question. The journals have no standards and no quality control and frequently publish within a very brief period of time while claiming that articles are peer-reviewed. There…