- 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)… - Guidelines
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
…scholarly merit. They should not be affected by the origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity, political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Journals should ensure no policies create an exclusionary environment for anyone wanting to engage with the journal and should regularly assess their policies for inclusivity. Back to top Principles of… - CaseCase Closed
Exposing citation manipulation and fraud in the community
…the fake identities were included in the authors’ list, presumably to lend them credibility. A large proportion of submissions included numerous citations to the guest editors’ articles, included on submission or during the peer review process. The publisher intends to retract the two published articles where the fake identities were used as coauthors. The published articles reviewed by the… - CaseCase Closed
Use of secondary data without proper attribution
Journal A received a paper on a cross sectional study from six coauthors. It was reviewed, accepted and published. Two months later, a clinician contacted the journal and said that the material was taken from their thesis submitted to the same institution six years previously. The corresponding author explained that the data were obtained from a large institution database and… - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum 4 September 2013: Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
…time zones. The type of information shared might include general enquiries about whether a particular author has submitted certain types of cases to other journals within a particular field, or specifics about manuscripts including data or even reviews. Such sharing might allow comparisons of submitted data in different versions of the same manuscript for example, or of potentially plagiarised… - CaseCase Closed
Critical comment and conflict of interest
Journal A received an article by Dr X (Article 1) commenting on another author’s work (Dr. Y) which had been published in Journal A and another journal (Journal B) of a different publisher. Because the scientific arguments were involved, and because the articles being criticised had been cited many times in the literature, the Editors of Journal A rejected Dr X's request to publish the work as… - CaseCase 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… - Case
Ethics committee waives consent for case report, editor disagrees
The authors wish to publish a case report that aims to characterise complex chromosomal abnormalities in a rare congenital syndrome. It describes, in detail, the clinical features of two newborn infants. When asked about consent to publish, the authors said they did not obtain it because the data were reported from existing clinical diagnostic test results and therefore did not constitute… - Case
Salami publication
A paper submitted to Journal A was rejected after critical peer review. Although the data and methods were sound, the data in the paper were not new and had been described, at least in part, in previous publications. The authors could also have combined the outcomes in the current paper with previous papers, thereby avoiding salami publication. The methods section was opaque, making it very… - CaseCase Closed
Call for retraction of a commentary
…(unspecified) partisan purposes in country X and had been sent direct to the author, copying in the editor-in-chief. Both correspondents stated that a retraction was warranted. The author of the commentary submitted a point-by-point response to the editor-in-chief. It concluded by recognizing the controversy around the commentary but said that the bullying tactics in demanding that the commentary be… - CaseCase Closed
Case histories and post publication debate
A letter to the editor from reader A was received by our journal concerning a published case history from author B. Reader A questioned the choice of treatment and author B's conclusion regarding the reason why the patient died. We believe this case raises at least two interesting questions. Firstly, the patient, or in this case the patient's relatives, could possibly suffer an… - CaseOn-going
Publication of expression of concern
…articles. Given the serious and extensive nature of the data fabrication, and the fact that the research involved infants, a very vulnerable group of subjects, we are very concerned about the fact that several other articles by this author have been published in our journal. Although the research reported in these articles was not within the scope of the university IRB investigation, the research was… - CaseCase Closed
Retraction update?
I'm seeking advice on how my journal should publish an update to an author requested retraction. In a past issue, our editorial team accepted an author requested retraction; the authors cited errors in data reported in various figures. We have since learned of other errors in the paper and its figures, and we would like to now publish an update that provides more detailed and specific… - CaseCase Closed
Reviewer requesting addition of multiple citations of their own work
A handling editor noticed a reviewer report where the reviewer instructed the author to cite multiple publications by the same reviewer in their manuscript. The handling editor noted a similar instance involving this reviewer from the past and requested the editorial office to look into his reviewing history. This uncovered a concerning pattern of behaviour where the reviewer habitually asked… - Guidelines
Text recycling guidelines for editors
COPE Text Recycling Guidelines are intended to advise editors and publishers on expected practice when identifying sections of the same text appearing in more than one of an author's own publications. Text recycling guidelines - Research
Data sharing policies in scholarly publications: interdisciplinary comparisons
Michal Tal-Socher and Adrian Ziderman, are the authors of a paper funded by a COPE research grant. Their paper, Data sharing policies in scholarly publications: interdisciplinary comparisons, has been published in the journal Prometheus, and gives an assessment of current preferences for data… - CaseCase Closed
Request to withdraw as an author of an accepted but unpublished paper
Last March we accepted a paper written by a post-doctoral fellow (PD) and an assistant professor (AP). The work was done by PD in AP's laboratory; PD has now moved on (to another country, in fact). Soon after the manuscript was sent to production, AP sent an email asking to delay production of the manuscript because AP was worried that there may be an ‘error’ in the manuscript that might requir… - Research
Publication practices in multidisciplinary teams: a closer look at authorship assignment and ranking 2013
…culture and different disciplines vary in how they assign and rank authors. Despite the growth in multi/interdisciplinary health research programs (e.g., public health, bioethics, science and technology studies), very little work has focused on understanding authorship assignment and ranking in multi/interdisciplinary teams. If disciplinary cultures shape authorship practices, it is reasonable to… - Research
Prevalence and attitudes towards plagiarism in biomedical publishing 2010
…Attitudes will be measured on two cohorts: corresponding authors of papers submitted to the CMJ in 2009 (approx. 300 authors) and research fellows in biomedical sciences in Croatia (approx. 500 research fellows). By correlating the prevalence of plagiarism with attitudes towards plagiarism in the two study groups, we will attempt to identify cross cultural differences and reasoning behind such a behavior.… - Case
Duplicate publication based on conference proceedings
A paper was submitted to Journal A and concern was raised by a reviewer that a substantial part of the paper had been previously published in two other journals. This point was taken up with the authors, who denied any lack of originality and maintained that their manuscript contained previously unpublished data. They did admit that part of the work had been presented as an invited lecture at…