- News
COPE Forum: 9 December 2014 meeting
The next COPE Forum meeting is being held on Tuesday 9 December 2014, 9–10.30am (GMT). The COPE Forum will be held virtually via webinar. The agenda and materials can be downloaded here (PDF 709kb). The invitation to join the webinar is below. We can accommodate up to 100 attendees,… - News
COPE Forum: 10 June 2015 meeting
The next COPE Forum meeting is being held on Wednesday 10 June 2015, 9am–10.30am (British Summer Time). The COPE Forum will be held virtually via webinar. The agenda and materials can be downloaded here (PDF 712kb). The invitation to join the webinar is below. We can accommodate up… - News
COPE Forum: 9 December 2015
The next COPE Forum meeting is being held on Wednesday 9 December 2015, 12noon–1.30pm (GMT). The COPE Forum will be held virtually via webinar. The agenda and materials can be downloaded here (PDF 478kb). The invitation to join the webinar is below. We can accommodate up to 100… - Event
COPE Forum: 10 June 2015
The June COPE Forum will be held on Wednesday 10 June 2015, 10am–11.30am (British Summer Time). The COPE Forum will be held virtually via webinar. Click here for full details.… - News
COPE Forum: 10 June 2015
The next COPE Forum meeting is being held on Wednesday 10 June, 10am–11.30am (British Summer Time). The COPE Forum will be held virtually via webinar. Click here for full details.… - Event
COPE Forum
The September COPE Forum will be held on Wednesday 09 September 2015, 3.00pm–4.30pm (British Summer Time) at The Montcalm Hotel, 34-40 Great Cumberland Place, London, W1H 7TW. Full details can be found here. … - Case
The incomplete retraction
A journal published a paper several years ago that subsequently had to be retracted, on the advice of the university where the work had been conducted. The university provided no further details but promised to do so. Two years later they confirmed that the paper should be retracted, but gave no information on exactly what had gone wrong and whether anybody had been punished. Subsequently, one… - Research
CrossCheck guidance: an analysis of typical cases of plagiarism in different disciplines 2010
Most plagiarism cannot be judged solely by the similarities discovered when using CrossCheck. Based on experience of cross checking more than 2000 manuscripts from approximately 50 countries in different parts of the world per year, this project aims to provide 3-5 typical cases of cross checked plagiarism in three different disciplines covered by the Journal of Zhejjiang University-SCIENCE… - Case
Authorship dispute over image
A journal published an article on a drug. They also accepted a letter questioning the method used for determination of particle size in the study. The author of the original article claimed that the image used in the letter was theirs and asked that the letter not be published. It appears that the two authors used to collaborate. The journal was unable to verify who produced the… - Case
Consent from relatives for genetic tests
A paper described a problem of two women who wanted their fetuses to be tested for a genetic condition, but where in both cases their partners had refused to give consent. Should the journal publish such a paper without obtaining consent from the partners? The editors think not, but the authors are unconvinced.… - News
Italian version of flowcharts now available
An Italian version of the COPE flowcharts are now available and can be downloaded here. Coming soon: Farsi, Spanish, Korean, and others! More details can be seen here.… - Case
Duplicate articles due to DOI reassignment
The editors of Journal C have found that 15 of their recent articles have been assigned slightly different DOIs in the Online First and the final issue versions. This arose from administrative problems with the publisher’s production process and has resulted in duplicated articles in both spaces, and there may be other duplicate articles due to reassigning different DOIs. The editors of… - Case
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
…(Article B), in a different journal (Journal Y) and with different authors was extensively plagiarised from Article A (54% similarity score by iThenticate and all figures from Article A are identical in Article B). Journal Y has signs of being a predatory journal: it is not covered by SCOPUS; the article has a non-operational DOI; it features citations from 2022 and 2023 despite allegedly being… - Case
Has formal ethical approval been granted that satisfies publication criteria?
The issue here is whether formal ethics approval has been granted in order to satisfy publication criteria. By way of some background information, a lot of screening data are collected on many athletes in many sports, both nationally and internationally. Historically, clubs and associations have disclaimers whereby athletes sign consent for their data to be used for audit purposes on the… - Event
Paper mills meeting: WCRI2024
Monday 3 June 18:30-20:30pm WCRI2024 attendees are welcome to register for an in-person meeting of WCRI2024 attendees with active interests in paper mills, organised by Jennifer Byrne. The meeting will be held on Monday 03 June from 6.30-8.30 pm at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre, after the conference… - News
Case discussion: Possible breach of reviewer confidentiality
…href="http://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts?classification=2779">Peer review flowcharts, such as: What to consider when asked to peer review a manuscript - Case
Redundant publication
I received a letter from a reader in November 1997, pointing out that a paper published in the BMJ in 1996 was substantially the same as a paper published in another journal in 1994. We have examined both papers and discovered: (1) The papers describe the same cohort. There are the same numbers of patients, recruited in the same year; they have the same range of starting and finishing blood pr… - Case
Partial disclosure of redundancy?
A reviewer detected that a paper received for review was almost identical to a paper published by the same group three years earlier in a journal of a different specialty. The paper concerned clinical and investigative aspects of a disease that crossed two specialties. Although the authors had included their previous paper in the reference list, the title of the paper had been changed from that…