- Case
Attempt to supress legitimate scientific results
…manger stated that the original manuscript had been approved for submission by institute B but the revised manuscript had not, and asked the editor to remove the paper from the journal’s website immediately. The editor said that this was not possible and further explained that if institute B wanted the paper retracted then they would need to provide a written justification. Within an hour, the… - Case
A case of duplicate publication
Ten years ago, the author published a paper on the same subject in his country’s specialty journal. The first report was short and the product of the author’s graduate work. The publication was in their country’s language. (Recently, the journal has been translating the abstracts of their previous publications into English, but the body of the text is still in their language.) Subsequently, t… - Case
Potential duplicate publication
…Journal C. _ Given that Journal C published just a few days before Journal B, who should be responsible for retraction? COPE felt that a notice of duplication would be sufficient as this would be picked up by Medline. _ The editors should publish a notice of duplicate publication in their own journal and write an editorial aimed at educating authors on the issues such as authorship, duplicate… - Case
Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article
…may either prove inconclusive or result in retraction based on compromised peer review. The journal operates a single anonymised process so the authors will be known to any new reviewers. The authors contend that they were not the cause of the conflict of interest in the initial review process and therefore a second round of peer review places an unfair burden on the future of their article. - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Authorship for sale
…deal with this huge amount of work? What are COPE guidelines for suspicions of paper mill organisation, but papers don’t show other unethical content?? When published paper mill articles are eventually retracted is there anything further publishers should consider doing in addition to alerting the editors and informing the institutions? COPE… - Case
Competing interest
- This case raises serious concerns. The connection was not made clear and this is a full conflict of interest. - The paper should be retracted. - The author should be asked explicitly if s/he had been paid by drug companies to write this review.… - Case
Simultaneous publication
…and published in Journal A earlier than in Journal B, albeit only a few days, would retraction by Journal A be appropriate? (2) If the authors indeed did something wrong, would a simple Concerns on Duplicate Publication be sufficient? Would banning the authors from publishing in Journal A for a few years be appropriate? (3) Are there other options?… - Case
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
…joint process did take place, but only one society agreed on the guidelines). At worst, both societies deny the guidelines and the paper should be retracted and the institutions also informed. If the complainant’s society confirms they had no knowledge of the guidelines and did not go through any consensus process, then that would be grounds for retraction. In that case, the statement that there was… - Case
Stolen ownership of a rare case
…the journal will not take further action until they receive a judgement. In the meantime an expression of concern which outlines the situation would be a way to inform readers that there is a potential issue especially if the situation might take some time to resolve. Ultimately, if the authors do not have ownership of the case they cannot publish it as theirs. In that case a retraction may… - Case
Undeclared competing interests
…to decide for themselves the relevance of the conflict of interest to the paper’s conclusions. - It is good practice for journals to ensure that they have a clear policy on conflict of interest. - Some journals send the paper back to the original reviewers and ask them to comment on whether the conflict of interest would have changed their opinion on the paper. - Retraction of a paper for an… - Case
New claim to authorship of published paper
…author X’s. Author A also encouraged the other co-authors to respond, and they supported him. The original authors said they would rather withdraw the paper than have author X’s name added. The editor indicated that withdrawal (retraction) of the paper was not an option at this stage, as no one had questioned the science in the paper, and the concern was solely over the authorship. The editor… - Case
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
…means necessary to pursue further investigation of this case by ourselves, which is why we are seeking advice from the COPE Forum. Questions for the COPE Forum(1) Should the forwarded email correspondence between the director and author A be considered conclusive evidence of alleged scientific misconduct on author A's behalf?(2) Should we retract the article based on the… - Case
Order of authors changing between a submitted manuscript and a published paper
order. In cases of dispute the journal might want to sanction temporary withdrawal of the paper from the website. _ However, the order, which promoted author B, would have already been picked up for citation purposes. _ The journal could post a temporary retraction, but this would lay the process open to abuse by those maliciously objecting to the authorship order. _ A comment could be posted,… - Case
Incorrect allegations from the head of an institute?
…been concluded. We are studying this at the moment and are considering taking further steps. The editor told the Forum that the journal has now issued a retraction of the paper and published an accompanying editorial on co-authors’ responsibilities. The corresponding author still denies any wrong doing and the co-authors are claiming it has “nothing to do with them”. The Dean of the institute… - Case
Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports
…expressed surprise and affront but agreed to withdraw it. (Incidentally, another of our reviewers identified that the author in question had retracted a paper from another journal last year). I then looked at Manuscript Central and discovered that he had two other case reports in our pipeline, one of them in a second revision. It was not hard (a simple Google search of the titles) to find the… - Case
Publishing corrections for articles in inactive journals
…Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern states that the new publisher takes on responsibility for the content of journals transferred to them and must do the best they can even if they do not have access to full files, metadata, and so on. The editors may need to contact aggregators and databases separately to inform them of the notice.… - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
…paper is not published (ie, he could retract the paper if it had been published). The advice was to write to the institution every 3 months until a response is received. Other advice was to contact the Grant or Funding Body or to write to the rector of the university explaining the case. All discouraged the editor from publishing details of the case in his journal until the results of an investigation… - Case
No ethics committee approval of a study
…retraction and freezing of intramural research funding and other support. A department publication and manuscript database system will be used for monitoring purposes.… - Case
Revoked parental consent
…provided, can it be revoked?• If the article was already published, what would be the reasonable course of action? Retraction?… - Case
Unauthorised use of data
…not simply settling some sort of score with author A. An Expression of Concern could be published highlighting the potential problem while the investigation proceeds; depending on the outcome of the investigation, a correction or retraction should follow. The key point here is who has the rights to the data. That must be resolved to complete any investigation. The institution needs to…