- Case
Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality
This is a complicated case which involves possible plagiarism, double submission and reviewer misconduct. The timeline is as follows: In year n, a paper P1 authored by A1 and A2 was published in the English language journal X. The paper describes a theoretical analysis of a particular phenomenon. In year n+6, paper P2 was published in a non-English language outlet by auth… - CaseCase Closed
Criteria to determine whether an author’s response to concerns about data validity is satisfactory
Questions were raised regarding the validity of data in two published papers (from the same author). The journal therefore followed the initial steps as listed in the COPE flowchart ‘What to do if you suspect fabricated data’ and contacted the author as appropriate. The author responded promptly and provided all the information requested (ethics approval letters, the original protocols… - Forum discussion topics
Author behavioural misconduct
…“behavioural misconduct” should be considered a form of research misconduct. Resnik (2019) 3 argued that sexual harassment meets three of four legally enforceable ethical standards for the conduct of research, and some scholarly societies, journals, and institutions have already implemented 4, or are keen to implement, a research misconduct… - CaseCase Closed
Behaviour of researcher during peer review
An anonymised manuscript was sent to a senior faculty member (researcher A) of a well-known institute for peer review. The faculty member was known to have pedigree in publication on the topic of the manuscript for many years. The manuscript was rejected with comments. Based on editorial opinion and other comments, the manuscript was rejected by the editor-in-chief. Six weeks after rejection, i… - CaseCase Closed
Does co-publication of an editorial constitute duplicate publication?
A publisher co-published an editorial across its portfolio of six journals. Co-publication was clearly flagged in each journal. Subsequently, there was a discussion on PubPeer on the editorials, with one comment suggesting that co-publication is the same as duplicate publication. The publisher believes that editorials that do not report on the results of research and which… - CaseCase Closed
Removal of an author
A paper was submitted to a journal with authors A, B, C, D and E. The paper was peer reviewed. Before acceptance, the corresponding author asked for a new author, author F, to be added, and an existing author, author C, to be removed. The editorial office asked all of the authors (authors A, B, C, D, E and F) to complete a change of authorship request form and for the corresponding autho… - CaseCase Closed
Plagiarism and copyright of material without permission
The presenters found an e-book where all of the 'chapters' comprised articles from different issues and volumes of their journal. These were used without the journal’s permission or any form of approval. The journal’s co-publisher neither gave permission nor was contacted. Also, no one contacted the authors of the articles involved for permission. The journal is open access with… - Case
Publishing complications and patient safety
Journal A is dedicated to communication about practical treatments related directly to patient and personal experiences. These ongoing discussions have been part of this specific medical profession for the past 50 years and journal A is a platform for these discussions. Regarding new treatments and new developments, permission from the local medical ethical commission is mandatory as wel… - CaseCase Closed
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
An article was submitted to our journal (journal A) in March. According to the journal’s working policy, the article was initially reviewed inhouse and comments were sent to the author. The authors replied to the comments but did not agree to the suggestion to convert the article to a short report. A rather impolite letter was sent by the author criticising the policies of the journal. We sent… - CaseCase Closed
Conflicts of interest, corrections, and student research
A journal usually publishes one student essay each issue. In a recent issue it published a student essay in support of a controversial but lucrative set of interventions. The paper declared no conflicts of interests and only listed two names in the acknowledgements section without describing their role in the manuscript. The author had been studying an MSc when the first manuscrip… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2022: Book wars
…media. John then highlights a range of milestones of development, including the point at which eBook sales peaked at 25% of sales in 2012, to the steady increase in audio book consumption, from a dominance of physical CD in 2010, to 90% digital streaming and download in 2019, and the proportions of sales and revenue of books in different formats; with romance, sci-fi and other fiction categories… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2020: Understanding text recycling
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/text-recycling-guidelines-editors-0">COPE's Text recycling guidelines for editors Text Recycling Research Project, update on the project March 2021 Text recycling research project, COPE… - CaseCase Closed
Request for removal for one author but a coauthor cannot be reached
A journal accepted a paper but after receiving the decision letter, the corresponding author asked if one of the coauthors could be removed from the authorship list. This coauthor is now a prominent politician and felt that their new role would conflict with being an author on the paper. The journal informed the corresponding author that they would need written confirmation from… - CaseCase Closed
Publication of correspondence relating to a paper currently online
A journal published an article discussing alleged partnerships between a well-known soft drinks brand and a number of health organisations in one particular country. The article was fully peer-reviewed prior to acceptance and now sits online in the journal’s advance access section of the website. A month after it appeared online, the Editor-in-Chief started to receive several written calls for… - CaseOn-going
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
A case report was submitted to our journal (journal X) in February and accepted for publication in September that same year. In late September, the first author on the manuscript contacted us to inform us that this exact case report had just been published in another journal (journal Y) by some of his colleagues, including some of the authors of our manuscript. In the initial submission to our… - Forum discussion topics
Editorial conflicts of interest
…A. Editors’ and authors’ individual conflicts of interest disclosure and journal transparency. A cross-sectional study of high-impact medical specialty journals. BMJ Open 2019;9:e029796. [A Marusic is currently a COPE Council member] COPE. - CaseCase Closed
Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?
An article was submitted to Journal A for publication. According to the journal’s policy, the article was scanned using anti-plagiarism detection software, which gave a 17% similarity result. As the journal allows up to 20% similarity, the article was sent for peer review to two reviewers. One of the reviewers noted that the article had been published in a similar form in a conference proceedin… - CaseCase Closed
Appropriate scope of review for retractions
An institutional review recommended retraction of certain works by a highly prolific and influential author who has since died. The institutional review focused on a relatively small portion of this author’s work. The institution recommended retraction based on deeming the articles unsafe and identifying several concerns, including that the articles' conclusions were implausible. As a pu… - 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 of… - CaseCase Closed
Retrospective registration, outcome switching and ethical approval
Follow-up (May 2019) The authors requested changes to the corrigendum which could not be accommodated. On this basis the Senior Editorial Committee decided to retract the paper. The retraction notice and editorial have been drafted and will be published online shortly.…