- Case
Allegation of reviewer malpractice
A member of the editorial board of Journal A was approached by an overseas colleague with a strange tale. An epidemiological study had been conducted in the community around an industrial facility, funded by a group of plaintiffs’ lawyers. The study concluded that health effects in the community were related to exposures emanating from the facility. A paper based on the study was submitted to J… - Case
Competing interest
An editorial board member of a journal submitted an unsolicited review article on a drug. The editor said the journal would consider the article, but suspected that the article had been commissioned or even written by a drugs company. S/he stipulated that the author must provide a financial disclosure statement before the article could be accepted. The journal published the review article, whic… - Case
Contacting Research Ethics Committees with concerns over studies
…reiterated C’s concerns. The paper was rejected on methodological grounds, but with an offer to see if the authors could address the criticisms. The authors revised and resubmitted the paper, which was sent to the more critical referee (B). His view was that the authors had done little to improve it. Another referee (E) was consulted, who was also sent the comments from C and D. E was happy to take part in… - Case
Authors used pseudonyms on a published article
A publisher has recently become aware that an article published in one of their journals two years ago uses pseudonyms instead of the real names of the two authors. Communication with the corresponding author has confirmed the use of pseudonyms. The corresponding author has informed the publisher that the authors used pseudonyms in order to obtain a fair review of the paper (the paper is in an… - Event
COPE Forum: September 2023
…by COPE Members for discussion at the Forum. 4. Updates to previous cases 23-02 Request for a retraction from a pharmaceutical company REGISTER… - Case
Dispute between two authors
After the discussion at the Forum, the journal decided not to take any further action. The consensus was that there were no grounds to retract author C’s mini commentary. There was not enough of value in author A’s letter to pursue the idea of publishing a version of it in the journal. The editor communicated the decision to author A and eventually informed the individual that the… - Case
Journal refuses to correct the record
An author contacted our journal in August 2011 informing us that a paper he had published in our journal in 2005 had been published, word for word, in another journal (journal X), under a different title and author group, in 2007. We followed the appropriate COPE flowchart and contacted the editor of journal X. The editor of journal X told us in September 2011 that he would publish a ret… - Case
Potential duplicate publication
_ The editors have an obligation to pursue this issue further, by writing to the authors’ employers, informing the authors of their intention. _ The editors should request a detailed notice of all action taken to investigate the matter. _ Journal C’s editor should publish a simultaneous notice of duplicate publication. _ The editors should contact the new editor and also the publisher of… - News
In the news: March 2018 Digest
…target="_blank">http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0192623318754792 While henceforth Nature journals will require authors to disclose non-financial, as well as financial conflicts of interest - News
Conflicts of interest focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/case/attempt-supress-legitimate-scientific-results">case 15-15), consequences of allowing a peer reviewer with a conflict of interest to continue reviewing a paper (case 10-34), and editors with conflicts of interest (e.g., cases 11-04 and - Case
License for using a published scale
…researchers to pay the fee (they have not told the researcher in question what the fee is yet, but through the internet blogs this seems to be a very variable amount). They have also sent emails to the president of the researcher’s university, deputy president and vice president for research, as well as to our journal where the paper is published. They are sending 3-4 threatening emails per day (although… - Case
Authorship dispute
…C (first author), was accepted for publication in journal Y.(3) The figures in the paper published in journal X were identical to the figures in author C’s PhD thesis.(4) The name of author B was misspelt in the paper published in journal X to avoid identification of the article search in PubMed. The editor of journal X contacted all of the authors by email and they responded as… - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
…stage/education level, disability, sexual orientation, culture, experience • Definitions of peer reviewer diversity (N=367): Proportional representation approaching that of a discipline/community (34%) Any degree of non-homogeneity (29%)… - Case
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…As a consequence, it is conceivable that the authors have randomized 100 patients to each study arm during a period of 3–4 months. In his appeal to the rejection of the first manuscript, the senior author mentioned that the ethics committee had already expressed approval. And yet, common experience with randomized trials indicates that the present study would be an extremely fast trial regarding… - Case
Authorship issue
…co-authors on this paper. That is, they believe that they made substantive intellectual contributions to Dr C’s research study. As authors, they would need to approve the submission of the manuscript to the journal. The editors emphasised their journal’s adherence to the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors regarding criteria for authorship, which are contained in the… - News
In the news: April Digest
…particularly from the global south, and to distinguish between low quality and “dodgy, fraudulent, pseudo, questionable, sham, illegitmate”, parodical and, my favorite, spoofy, journals. https://jkms.org/DOIx.php?id=10.3346/jkms.2019.34.e99 The US Federal Trade Commission fined OMICS Group, iMedPub LLC and Srinubabu… - News
In the news: February 2021
…Science and the scientific journal Nature, and is awarded to one or two people a year for standing up for sound science in public. The Maddox Prize 2020 received over 100 nominations from 34 different countries. The importance of the prize is stated well by one of the judges, Professor Terrence Forrester, Chief Scientist & Managing Director, UWI Solutions for Developing Countries at the… - News
In the news: January 2018 Digest
…" target="_blank">https://wellcome.ac.uk/news/sharing-clinical-trial-data-what-it-means-you Crossref has convened a group to explore the creation of a global grant identifier system. - News
Post-publication conflicts of interest
…educate future authors. Case 04-34: An author gave contradictory replies when an editor asked whether a drug company’s involvement in a published literature review had actually gone beyond the paid consultation stated in the conflict of interest statement. COPE Forum advised retraction if the author had in fact been paid to… - Forum discussion topics
Editorial conflicts of interest
…absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; } .embedtool .fluid-vids {position: initial !important} /*-->*/ COPE Forum discussion To maintain credibility, scholarly publications need to make the utmost effort to be transparent…