What peer review means in the arts, humanities and social sciences: Forum discussion topic June 2020
…href="https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/6648412967995945996" target="_blank">register for the Forum by Monday 1 June 2020. Your comments Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member or register as…- Case
Publication of correspondence relating to a paper currently online
…the letters are published. As one piece of correspondence has become formalised as a letter, if this is from the complaining side, the authors should have the right of reply. An editorial note could eventually be added for transparency. … - Case
Request for removal for one author but a coauthor cannot be reached
…a conflict of interest at a new job, then that could be added as a conflict of interest if at the time of the research the author was also pursuing activities that may have affected the research, and the authors and possibly peer reviewers may need to revisit the validity of the paper. If it is a new conflict of interest, there could be an editorial note saying exactly which part/s of the paper that author… - Case
Conflicting authorship in a collaboration
…a comment and Author A provided a reply to the comment. Both the comment and the reply were evaluated by an independent referee who recommended that Researcher Y should rewrite the comment by omitting all unnecessary “comments” and focus on the science and methods. The independent referee said the reply should concentrate on clarifying and/or disproving if possible the comment. The referee added: “Both… - Case
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
…in chief checked the manuscript and found that the author had completely copied it from a previously published article although it was stated in the cover letter that the material had not been previously published or submitted elsewhere for publication. The author only changed the author names and added their own and the second author's names (A and B). There were no common authors, and the… - Case
Citation manipulation in a conference proceeding
We have received a communication from the conference organiser and conference committee of a conference proceeding published by us. They initially wrote to us advising that members of the teaching staff at their university manipulated the references of 68+ papers by deleting references/adding references which had nothing to do with the research. The organiser advised that the university… - Case
Paper submitted for publication without consent or knowledge of co-authors
…editor-in-chief of journal A with a request to retract the published article claiming the following:• Co-author A claims that this paper was submitted to journal A by CA during her absence (maternity leave).• Co-author A claims that she and the other 7 co-authors (authors B, C, D, E, F, G and H) were not informed about the publication in journal A by CA.• Co-author A claims that 90% of the… History of COPE
…unnecessary because the international profession produces an adequate response to research misconduct”. By 2000, COPE had over 90 members, a constitution was drafted, and Mike Farthing was elected Chair. 2003 to 2006 - a code of conduct for editors, and authorship guidelines Fiona Godlee became Chair of COPE in 2004. The Code of Conduct for Editors was launched and…- News
Case discussion: Editor manipulation of impact factor
…referencing (giving full bibliographic details in the reference list at the end). The case provides a reminder that everyone involved in the scholarly enterprise is expected to know how to present work ethically, cite sources appropriately, and reference those sources to allow others to verify information and read further. A degree of self-citation is expected, but adding or suggesting the addition of… - Event
COPE Seminar 2021
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars-and-webinars/research-publication-ethics">Watch keynote address webinar Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship Unethical authorship practices include guest, gift, and ghost authorship, as well as not obtaining consent from co-authors and adding fake names as co-authors. Knowingly publishing in predatory journals or using paper mills to buy or sell authorship could also be classed… - Case
Disagreement between authors and sponsor
Following review of the Forum discussion, the society's board of directors agreed to proceed with publication of the article. Rather than drafting a full editorial to explain the controversy, a footnote was added to the manuscript to explain the unusual delay between acceptance of the manuscript and publication. The authors were notified of this, and agreed to the proposed language for the… - Case
Reviewer requesting addition of multiple citations of their own work
…authors to add citations to his work when reviewing their manuscript, often when there was no scientifically legitimate reason to do so. A deeper analysis of this reviewer’s activity showed that he predominantly asked for his own papers to be cited, as well as citations to papers that heavily cited his work. In some cases, he requested for more than 30 citations of his own papers to be added to… - Case
An ambiguous plagiarism case
…to say if they know the remaining coauthor in the paper in A, and an explanation also needs to be sought from the lead author of the A paper. Were they another helper in the paper in B and the thesis, or a co-conspirator or added or invited double gift/guest author? The editor should inform the institution of author A and ask them to formally investigate. If author A has published any other… - Case
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
…and to take public responsibility for it, and so subsequent changes to the authorship list would not be allowed (unless they had been added without their consent). This may need to be nuanced if there are personal safety considerations. Two further suggestions were made for potential actions. The first is that the publisher could issue a carefully worded disclaimer to the effect that the work… - News
In the news: January 2018 Digest
…target="_blank">http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0187394 But maybe this will all be a thing of the past when automated tools are writing our scientific papers, in the not too distant future? - News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…matters would have been germane. Given that the subjects of the research had the same systemic conditions, identification of the individuals would have been a relevant concern. As noted in Journals’ Best Practices for ensuring consent for publishing medical case… - Discussion documents
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
…://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/editors-sharing-information-on-possible-misconduct-cope-guidelines.pdf" target="_blank">Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct PDF 89 KB … Publication ethics issues in AHSS: New study
…new, publication ethics guidance. The organisation is encouraging journal editors to make the most of COPE’s resources available to them. Commenting on the project, Deborah Poff, COPE Chair, added: “This research is part of a renewed commitment by COPE to increase the diversity of our services for all disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. These findings provide important…- Case
Potential duplicate publication
…two papers were different and there was not “significant duplication”. 2. They mentioned at the time their paper was submitted to Journal C they did not know the citation for the papers in Journal B. 3. They added that the editor of Journal C knew that there were other papers due to be published in Journal B. 4. They stated that “the publication of two different papers in two different journals with… - Case
Legal advice
…authority. The committee commented that what ever the editor does, they will be in trouble and added to the authors list! It was pointed out that the complaint had been taken to the highest level in the country and it is difficult to see why the editor should join in the debate and there was speculation if the material should be published. It sounded like the author wants all those involved with their…