- Flowcharts
Systematic manipulation of the publication process
…paper mills and what to do about them – a publisher’s perspective article, 2020 Retraction guidelines COPE guidelines … - Case
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
The Forum was reminded that COPE is not an enforcer of policies or guidelines. There was a common feeling that both Journal B and the authors had acted correctly and that Journal A had likely engaged in unethical practices by continuing to publish the article after agreeing to its withdrawal. Beyond this, it may up to the authors to work with Journal A to facilitate a retraction and… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraudulent publication
- The editor should write up a detailed critique of the papers. - The editor should contact Journal B to get the article retracted.… - Case
Suspected plagiarism
…proved, the editor can then decide to retract the paper. Other advice was to inform the website of the situation to determine if there has been a breach of copyright.… - Seminars and webinars
WCRI 2019: Perspectives on predatory publishing
…careers, refuse to retract, tarnish legitimate Open Access, pollute the literature, and reduce trust in scholarship. Those who publish in these journals are mainly but not exclusively from Asia and Africa – thousands of North American and European researchers also publish with them – driven by pressures to publish and the difficulty of publishing in English for those who this is not their first… - Case
How many “mistakes” are too many?
…of the Forum argued for stronger action and suggested contacting the author’s institution. But most agreed that the paper should be retracted as the research may be unethical.… - Case
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
…communicate with them and seek any clarification. Question for the Forum: Are there actions Journal X can take if the article that plagiarised and was published in the likely predatory journal is never retracted. … - Case
Claim of plagiarism in published article
The editor updated the Forum that the paper by author B has now been removed from the publisher’s website, with no notice of formal retraction, although it is still possible to find the paper by a search of PubMed. The Forum suggested that the style of writing of review articles may mean that this type of issue arises. Author B may have been commissioned to write the review and asked to… - Case
Going public on potential fraud
- To retract a paper, there needs to be irrefutable evidence of fraud in the public domain, and the only body capable of exercising due process in this matter had made no definitive ruling on fraud. - A notice withdrawing aegis also requires proof of misconduct as it amounts to the same level of accusation. - X should write to the journal and include the correspondence from the national… - Case
A pre-submission inquiry with a bribe
The advice from the Forum was that, in general, these types of enquiries from third party organisations can be ignored. They can be added to a spam filter. COPE contributed to this blog on Retraction Watch which explains how some of these companies operate ( - Flowcharts
When institutions are contacted by journals
…Institutions and publishers should communicate at each step of the process. When an investigation identifies an error the institution should include recommendation of a correction or retraction, depending which is appropriate to the case. Policies and training should be updated where necessary. Related resources - Case
How to correct an incorrect decision to publish a flawed paper
…retracted. We have examined the original paper and the newly published data, and have concluded that the paper is consistent with the new data and the complaint cannot be upheld. However, in the course of this we noticed a completely independent problem: important statements made in the discussion in the paper do not agree with the results presented in the tables in the paper. Although this seems clear… - Case
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
…an internal investigation. This investigation confirmed our author’s version of events. We informed the EiC of journal Y of the outcome of the institutional investigation and asked them to take the appropriate action in retracting the article. The EiC assured us that the journal was investigating also but the enquiry was not yet complete. We followed up several times, including attempting an… - Case
Inadequately supervised research?
…adequacy of PhD supervision but the editor retracted his statement questioning the conscientiousness of the supervisor. The paper was rejected.… - Discussion documents
How should editors respond to plagiarism? April 2011
…institutions, issuing corrections, and issuing retractions. The current COPE flowcharts recommend different responses to major and minor plagiarism. Possible, more detailed, definitions of these are proposed for discussion. Decisions about when to use text-matching software are also outlined. The appendix describes other systems for classifying plagiarism and links to related documents and resources. - Case
Duplicate publication
…co-authors whose names appeared on several of the papers was also questionable, although many might be unaware of their involvement due to gift authorship. It would be unwise not to consider any publications from this group until all of the authors had been approached. _ The main issues for the editors were retraction and notice of duplication of known articles and referral of the authors to the head of… - Case
Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?
…organisers did not inform the authors. After the response from the journal, the authors wrote to the conference organisers asking them to retract the article from their website. The conference organisers are not replying to the emails from the authors. Questions for COPE Council Is this a case of duplicate submission/self plagiarism with the authors being unaware?… - Case
Paper published without permission or acknowledgement from institution
…threaten retraction of the article if no agreement is reached. The editor could give the institution and the authors a time limit, after which the journal will retract the article.… - Case
Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality
…should assess the level of overlap and consider retraction of the second paper if the overlap is unacceptable. A3 was a junior author but was also the supervisor on the paper but it may be that publication practices were not correctly understood. The advice from the Forum was to address the plagiarism issue. If there is an acceptable explanation, then the editor should consider the less serious offense… - Case
Handling self-admissions of fraud
…data by an independent laboratory reported in the published literature would be necessary to counter the first author’s self-admission of fraud. Since none of these avenues turned up evidence to counter the self-admission, we suggested that the experiments in question could be independently repeated by a third party or the paper will need to be retracted. In August 2015, the corresponding…