- Case
Plagiarism of published paper
…a second email on 29 July. The Dean finally acknowledged receipt of our letter on 1 August saying he will investigate the case. The editor sent a follow-up email on 25 August and the Dean immediately replied that the case is now under investigation.… - 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… - Case
Suspected unattributed text in a published article
…href="http://publicationethics.org/files/Web_A29298_COPE_Text_Recycling.pdf">COPE/BioMed Central guidelines on text recycling. COPE resources: COPE flowchart on plagiarism Text recycling - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
A review article was submitted to the journal and sent for peer review. One of the reviewers brought to the editor’s attention that a substantial number of sentences and sections of the paper had directly, verbatim, been copied from chapter books and a monograph he had written in the past. The editor asked the reviewer to provide the texts in question. The editor carefully compared the submitte… - Case
Withdrawal of an article
We received a manuscript for consideration for publication in one of our journals (Journal A). During the peer review process we became aware that the manuscript had already been published in another journal (Journal B). When we asked the authors about this they said that they had asked the other journal to withdraw their manuscript before publication but this had not been done. We rejected the… - Event
COPE Lightning Talk: AI
…Marie was elected to the COPE Council in 2020. Dan Kulp, COPE Chair Dan fields the questions as we open the main part of the event to the audience. Dan has been in scholarly publishing for over 27 years, most… - News
Upcoming CrossRef webinars
…;llr=hxavzvcab">Registration Date: Thursday, April 4, 2013Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 4:00 pm (London)Moderator: Rachael LammeyRegistration Date: Thursday, May 23, 2013 Vacancies on COPE Council
…with the other being a 2–3 day residential meeting incorporating subcommittee meetings and a strategy day. It is expected that all COPE Council members will attend all of these meetings. Annual seminars and workshops are held in a number of locations worldwide and it is hoped that Council Members will participate in at least one of these. Council is divided into subcommittees, and Council…- News
Vacancies on COPE Council
…Forum and responding to member queries, are undertaken electronically. It is anticipated that the work of Council Members amounts to about 2–3 hours per week dependant on the activity at that time. This is in addition to attendance at meetings. Length of service Council Members will serve on COPE Council for 3 years, with the possibility to stand for election for an additional 3 years.… - Case
Plagiarism in a review article
A review article was spontaneously submitted and sent out to three peer reviewers, which is standard practice for the journal. One of these reviewers expressed “serious concerns” about the paper. In a telephone conversation, s/he explained that the structure (headings, subheadings, etc), large “chunks of the text,” and most of the references had been plagiarised from a teaching syllabus that s/… - Case
How to correct a published paper
A paper was published in July 2012. The author was told by their institution that one of the figures had to be replaced, in the interests of national security. Failure to do this would result in imprisonment. The editor checked with one of his reviewers who said that replacing the figure will not affect the results or conclusions of the paper. So, can we replace the published version dir… - Case
Submission of article by ghost author
A corresponding author and two coauthors submitted a paper to our journal. The article was published after due process of reviewing etc. After publishing the paper, a student contacted us to say that the paper was totally derived from their Master's thesis. The journal's Research Ethics Committee heard the case and it was confirmed that the paper had been extracted from the thesis. All the auth… - Case
Possible image manipulation
A whistleblower posted on PubPeer regarding some apparently overlapping images in an article published several years earlier. To the research integrity team there appeared similarities, enough to warrant a request for the original images / raw data from the authors. The authors said they no longer had access to the original data and have denied any editing was made to the images. We commissione… - Seminars and webinars
Caste and publishing: an ethics gap?
…class="resource-download-inline__shadow__inner"> Further reading Countering helicopter research with equitable partnerships The Lancet Helicopter research and ethics dumping Nature Related COPE… - Case
Request for retraction due to alleged ethical misconduct in a grant application
A journal received a request from University A for a published paper to be retracted, citing ethical issues with the grant application submitted by an author from University B. The journal is satisfied that the rigorous editorial processes required by the journal were followed prior to publication and asked for specific details of the ethical breach; evidence that all authors on the publication… - Case
Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers
What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is… - News
Tackling the problem of paper mills
…virtual) Academic Publishing Europe Conference. The session, “The Version of Record under Attack! The Dark Side of the Scholarly Publishing Universe”, was chaired by Dr Liz Marchant (Taylor & Francis). The session had presentations from two editors of scholarly journals, Professor Dr Christian Behl and Professor Dr Bernhard Sabel, and from Tim Kersjes, a Research… Cookie policy
…COPE protects any personal information you provide to us. The policy also describes how to get in touch with us if you have any questions or concerns. Related content All COPE policies Page history Last updated 11 April 2022 Back to…- Event
COPE webinar: managing paper mills
…top Related resources Paper mills: authorship for sale COPE Seminar 2021 Systematic manipulation of the publication process, COPE guidance, updated 2022 - Case
Comments linked to retracted papers
A journal has received comments linked to a research paper that later has been retracted. This has led to a debate over whether there should be some notification beyond the link to the actual retracted paper. Questions for COPE Council Should the comments themselves be retracted? What does COPE recommend? What do other journals do? …