- Case
Unusual consent process in a vulnerable population
A clinical trial was conducted in a low income country. The trial involved two schools. At the first school (the control school), children would receive a one-off drug treatment for a common infection (such “mass drug administration” is the norm for treating and breaking the transmission cycle of this infection). At the second school, children would receive the same one-off drug treatment plus… - CaseOn-going
Concerns over research by an author in numerous, separate publications
…asking for more information and emphasising that strict confidentiality is assured. The Forum noted that the editor has a duty of care with regard to the journal’s published papers. The editor should contact the reviewer(s) of the 2004 paper that was published in his journal and ask them to look again at the paper. Other advice was to contact the other journals where the author has published as they… - CaseOn-going
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
…journal, there were 10 authors. During the review process, two authors were removed from the article at their request. This happened in May, between manuscript resubmission. These two authors then submitted the case report to journal Y, with a new set of co-authors. We have confirmed with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of journal Y that they received their initial submission in May. As noted,… - CaseOn-going
Profusion of copied text passages
…paper, the editor may feel that borrowed phases can be overlooked, but this may be unacceptable in a review paper if the author is purporting the presentation of novel ideas. Regarding a process, the Forum suggested the editor may want to clearly state the journal policy in the instructions to authors, to head off similar cases in the future. The editor should continue to check all submitted… - CaseOn-going
Authors’ contributions and involvement by medical communications company
…the basis of an outline, and also the addition of references. Based on responses from authors, our contact was also concerned about authors’ level of understanding of the work and study design being reported in the manuscript. Our contact has been asked to respond to reviewers’ comments on behalf of authors. We asked for details of the manuscripts this person worked on; one is currently under… - CaseCase Closed
How to correct an incorrect decision to publish a flawed paper
…was processed before we started using online submission, and the reviewers’ and editor’s reports no longer exist. We believe that this inconsistency would justify a notice of correction to the original paper, by the criteria in the COPE guidelines. However, the case does not fit the usual pattern because we are not responding to new information but to a realisation that we made a mistake and… - CaseCase Closed
Duplicated gel images
The Forum agreed that the articles should be reviewed on a case by case basis. All agreed that the editor needs clarification of what is going on, perhaps by obtaining further expert opinion on the validity of the work. Is the duplication a result of laziness? The editor needs to establish whether the scientific record needs to be corrected. At the moment, the editor does not have enough… - Case
Authorship dispute
The paper in question describes a collaborative study of several datasets (not all previously published). A putative referee was asked to review the paper and declined. However, this led to a written complaint asserting that (s)he should be an author as (s)he had made a significant contribution to some of the work described in the paper. After promising comments from referees, the… - Seminars and webinars
Handling a case of misconduct
…care to employees, the requirements of funders and journals, and the need to maintain trust in the institution’s research output. Processes must be consistent and institutions should engage in ongoing review and improvement of their systems. Handling allegations of… - CaseOn-going
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…review a manuscript on a randomized study. In the cover letter of the second manuscript, dated June 2014, the authors referred to this discussion and stated that 100 patients had been randomized to each group. [As an aside, in an online source detailing procedures carried out in the department of the authors, the procedure in question is said to have been performed more than 1200 times a year.… - Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
We are seeking guidance on the ethical issues surrounding drug/medicine use evaluation (DUE or MUE) audit cycles, particularly with respect to the publication of findings but also perhaps with regard to the conduct of these audits in general. DUE is a quality improvement activity that involves data collection and evaluation (usually by audit), followed by ‘action’ or intervention and a r… - Case
An authorship dispute and a question about when a paper is considered published
…a revised and extended paper for possible publication in journal J Author A submitted the revised paper PV2. The paper was reviewed and accepted by editor E for publication in journal J. The proof of paper PV2 was posted on the journal’s website by publisher PJ. Shortly afterwards Author C contacted Editor E claiming that he was also an author of the paper PV2 and further… - Case
Duplicate publication
…expanded, but with an entirely new list of authors. An independent statistician reviewed both papers and found that the content of two tables was identical except for the p values. Many of these had acquired a significance not suggested in the first manuscript. Further to this example and the examination of just a few of the listed publications, clear cases of duplicate publication and attempted… - CaseCase Closed
Authors referring readers to an objectionable version of an article on a preprint site
…Most people use a preprint server for the purpose it is intended—to get work out for comment before publication. However, in this case the authors took advantage of the absence of a policy, and violated the spirit both of publication in a reviewed journal and of the purpose of preprint servers. The authors seemed to want to bypass the editorial process to be able to continue to make their derogatory… - Case
Repetitive duplicate submission to multiple journals and redundant publication
…submitted to J8, J2, and J7. J2 contacted J8 about possible duplicate submission. J8 rejected MsD based on reviewer reports and also added a note to the author informing them that there had been a report of possible duplicate submission with their Ms. The abstract of MsD has been found to be identical to the abstract of an article published in June 2005 in J10 with the exception of two… - Case
Potential duplicate publication
…B (ahead of the joint site/national agency paper) or to Journal C (when the joint site/national agency papers were under review with Journal B). The corresponding author of paper 3 published in Journal C was contacted. This author did not reply, but a response was received from two other authors on behalf of all the authors at site 1. This stated: 1. The authors felt that the emphasis and message in the… - CaseCase Closed
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
…(potential or actual) at the time of publication at the latest (and when submitting at the earliest). Once an article is published, disclosure of arising conflicts is not necessary unless the conflicts were 'potential' in the sense that they could be perceived as influencing the article in question (eg, a favorable product review that supports the author's application for employment at a related company).… - Case
Simultaneous publication
…reported in these two papers were obtained separately rather than the same results reported in two papers. In addition to those readers who sent emails to us, the reviewers of Paper X and a few editorial board members of Journal A who read these two papers all agreed that the two papers were highly similar. We contacted the office of Journal B and the Editor, and received a message… - Forum discussion topics
Claiming institutional affiliations
…this discussion from COPE Members and non-members here: Your comments You must be logged in to leave a comment on the COPE website. If you are not a member of COPE you can register to create a guest account. Comments will not appear immediately. We review comments on our website before publishing them, to ensure they are… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship
In this webinar, the speakers cover ways of promoting ethical authorship and preventing fraudulent authorship. The CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) system, authorship definitions and policies, and relevant operating procedures and education are reviewed from institutional and publishing perspectives. This session is one of