- News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2021
…="https://www.stm-assoc.org/standards-technology/working-group-on-image-alterations-and-duplications/">STM Recommendations for handling image integrity issues. These best practice recommendations have recently been released by the STM Working Group on Image Alteration and Duplication Detection and outline a systematic approach in applying image integrity screening, pre- or post-publication, across scholarly journals, books, preprint servers, and data repositories. The group is - Case
Prolific authors
…(2) When should we, as journal editors, raise concerns about overly prolific authors to institutions? (3) Is there any way to identify the most prolific authors on a systematic basis (databases, search engines, software)?… - Guidelines
A short guide to ethical editing for new editors
…reviewer, editorial board member on your way to becoming an editor. These guidelines offer a systematic framework to organise your approach to your new editorial position, understanding the current status, familiarising yourself with current practices, beginning to build relationships with key members of the editorial and wider community and assessing the needs for development. COPE Guidelines are… - Case
Comments linked to retracted papers
…href="https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines">COPE retraction guidelines state that: 'Articles that relied on subsequently retracted articles in reaching their own conclusions, such as systematic reviews or meta-analyses, may themselves need to be corrected or retracted.' However, the appropriate response may depend on the type of commentary in question. There are usually two types of commentary: one that comments on and interprets… - Case
Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers
…they should feel able to inform the person raising the concern that they have done all they are able to do. If the article or its findings are felt to be of sufficiently high impact, then the journal should make an effort to investigate the concerns, both for the integrity of the published record, and to avoid a distorting impact on systematic reviews and citations. Some image issues can be… - News
In the news: March 2021
…href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1372" target="_blank">review and critique of existing guidelines on text recycling including COPE’s, showing widely inconsistencies and contradictions in terminology and definitions. Image manipulation To address the problem of image manipulation in research, the simple rule, "The image analysis workflow should be fully documented and reproducible" is proposed as a - News
In the news: April 2021
…publish-or-perish culture, with Chinese government efforts to crack down on research misconduct noted. A blog by the American Society of Microbiology describes the problem of image manipulation, their journals' approach using COPE guidelines when a problem is detected, and barriers they've… - Case
Falsification of certificates of deposit of new bacterial species in culture collections
…concerned to avoid damage to the reputations of those co-authors who were not aware of the falsification. The editor-in-chief is also considering writing an editorial to highlight this issue and to ask other collections to take steps to prevent their certificates from being similarly manipulated. We would like the advice of the committee as to the merits of this course of action.… - News
In the news: March Digest
…suspicious patterns of self-citation requests by a biophysicist/bioinformatician either acting as a peer reviewer or handling manuscripts as an Editorial Board member. The individual, who was previously named as a highly cited researcher by Clarivate Analytics, is accused of systematically manipulating the peer review process to boost his own citations – allegations he denies. - Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…by storm in the last year. This has significant implications for research integrity, and the need for improved means and tools to detect fraudulent research. The advent of fake papers and the systematic manipulation of peer review by individuals and organisation has led editors and publishers to create measures to identify and address several of these fraudulent behaviours. However, the detection… Sample Letters
…Before publication Download .doc (28 kb) After publicationDownload .doc (24 kb) Figure manipulation Download .doc (26 kb) Change of authorship Before publication- Case
Possible case of fraud
A paper was submitted to us describing an RCT carried out in a Far Eastern hospital. Soon after the manuscript had been sent out for review, one of the reviewers sent a letter alerting us to a “possible case of fraud”. The reviewer in question appears to have compared notes with another investigator in his institute, and together they realised that the same group had submitted two… - Case
Fraudulent data presented in a manuscript
Author A submitted a trial comparing the safety and feasibility of two delivery techniques in patients. The trial, which was done at author A’s institution, was assessed by inhouse editors, who decided to send it out for peer review. During the peer review process, some reviewers pointed out that “this work seems premature, experimental and hard to believe”, and also expressed suspicion… - News
Complaints and appeals
…COPE will approach your complaint with systematic questions, clarifying the situation, and will attempt to help you understand and resolve your publication ethics problem. COPE is like Switzerland in its neutral, educational stance around complaints. COPE co-chairs Geri Pearson and - Case
Does co-publication of an editorial constitute duplicate publication?
…editorial. Transparent notification of the simultaneous and duplicate publication in each article is key, as well as the texts being identical. The main problems with duplicate publication (and the attendant harms) are: the risk of misleading an audience; the risk of duplicate counting of the same patient data in subsequent systematic reviews/meta-analyses, with the attendant harm of… - Translated resources
El autor solicita que ciertos expertos no participen en el proceso editorial: caso
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-latin-american-spanish">Guias eticas para revisores pares Qué considerar al ser invitado a hacer una revisión por pares de un manuscrito … The COPE Case Taxonomy
…details/findings/documents. Data integrity When there is data falsification or fabrication, also mistakes/problems leading to data problems. Data manipulation Issues to do with handling and changing of data. Data misappropriation/theft Data ownership Data, selective/misleading reporting/interpretation Data or…- News
Research Integrity, Sixth Report of Session 2017-19 from the House of Commons
…specific questions about the number of retractions of published articles from the UK, stating that approximately 400 had been retracted since 1977. According to Dr. Oransky, the overall increase in retractions likely reflects “a greater willingness of journals to withdraw problematic papers; a growing reliance on software tools to detect plagiarism; and more attention to manipulated or otherwise… - Case
Ethical approval and fabrication of results
A group of authors, based in private practice, submitted three manuscripts to Journal A and one to Journal B. All the manuscripts described the application and effectiveness of a spinal manipulation technique. The first manuscript in Journal A was a case series of 21 patients. After publication, a member of the journal’s editorial board pointed out several flaws in the study design,… - Case
Change of corresponding author after manuscript published online
…could the authors be trying to manipulate the publication process because in some countries the corresponding author position is seen as prestigious. So the journal needs to establish why the request is being made. The authors need to provide a satisfactory explanation before the journal can consider the request further. The Forum suggested that the journal should follow the advice in the COPE…