July 2011

Opinion / UK parliament report calls for research integrity officers at all institutions

28/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

A report from the UK House of Commons Select Committee inquiry into peer review recommends, among other things, that all institutions should appoint somebody to take a lead in research integrity. This was one of the recommendations made by COPE to the inquiry. The full report is available here.

Opinion / Indian scientists call for research integrity organization

27/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

Scientists in India have called for a body to investigate research misconduct. See the report here

Opinion / More from the COPE retraction project

20/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

A second paper has been published from the retraction research funded by COPE. It used qualitative methods to examine editors' experiences of retracting articles. See Williams P & Wager E. Exploring why and how journal editors retract articles: findings from a qualitative study. Science & Engineering Ethics: doi 10.1007/s11948-011-9292-0. Available here.

News

eLearning course due to launch September 2011

19/7/2011

The COPE eLearning course on publication ethics is due to launch in September 2011. The course consists of eleven modules in total, four of which will be released in September. These are: An Introduction to Publication Ethics, Plagiarism, Fabrication and Falsification. The remaining seven modules will be released subsequently. For more information contact us here.

Opinion / Ethical concerns of peer reviewers

14/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

An interesting study published in Nursing Ethics by Broome et al examined ethical concerns of peer reviewers and discovered that these are not always satisfactorily handled by editors.

Opinion / Editor's dilemmas over non-repeatable research

13/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

The New York Times (June 25th) reports on the difficulties for editors over whether to retract reports of findings that cannot be replicated and also the problems caused if journals are reluctant to publish confirmatory or negative studies.

Opinion / Student assignment highlights plagiarised article

11/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

According to Retraction Watch, an author discovered his work had been plagiarised when he asked students in his class to give a presentation on a recent paper they'd picked from a peer-reviewed journal. The researcher recognised his own work from the student's presentation and, when he checked the article, found it included large plagiarised sections.

Opinion / NY Times reports fraudulent clinical trial

11/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

The New York Times describes how a paper describing a method for determining which treatment cancer patients should get was used as the basis for a clinical trial (therefore putting patients at risk) before being retracted. A fuller description of the case has also been published in Annals of Applied Statistics 2009; 3:1309-1334.

Opinion / Problems with research integrity governance in the UK

6/7/2011 by Elizabeth Wager

The Times Higher Education Supplement reports on current problems with organizations involved with research integrity in the UK (see here).

(Note: COPE is represented on the UKRIO advisory board and donated money to help get UKRIO established)