- Case
Institution wants to retract despite ongoing legal proceedings
The case has been with two publishers for more than a year. Journal A at publisher A published article A by author A, affiliated to institution A and institution B (in another country), and author B affiliated to institution B. Journal B at publisher B then published article B, by the same authors and affiliations. The two articles are on closely related research. Shortly after… - Case
Conflicts of interest, corrections, and student research
A journal usually publishes one student essay each issue. In a recent issue it published a student essay in support of a controversial but lucrative set of interventions. The paper declared no conflicts of interests and only listed two names in the acknowledgements section without describing their role in the manuscript. The author had been studying an MSc when the first manuscrip… - News
WCRI 2019: Preprints and their place in the publishing ethics landscape
…rapidly across many disciplines. Preprints also offer some interesting questions and potential concerns on the ethics front, particularly in the health and medical fields where it is unclear whether open discussions on early research are beneficial toward improving the work, or whether there is potential harm in publishing unvetted and non-peer-reviewed findings. In this Monday afternoon session… - Case
Author dispute over need for retraction
…claim. The institution under whose auspices the research was conducted has carried out an investigation, and has apparently found evidence to believe that scientific misconduct has occurred. The institution has contacted the group 1 authors and has demanded that the authors retract the paper. The group 1 authors do not feel that the investigation has been properly conducted, and have declined to… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: January 2024
…virtual Summit which brought together representatives from research bodies, publishers, researchers/sleuths, and universities from 15 countries. The participants from the Summit have committed to keep the discussion alive, and develop and execute plans, through working groups associated with each action. We encourage members to keep up to date on efforts to identify and stop fraudulent actions by paper… - Case
The dubious scientist
A scientist wrote to a medical journal asking if it was interested in receiving an editorial from him. The editorial would criticise current HIV vaccine research. The scientist is the senior partner of a technology company, and he printed his company’s website in his communication to the journal. The home page of the website advertises a patented toxin, and the site claims that this toxin can… - Case
Single patient trials and lack of data
…conducted 20 years ago. But it emerged that the researcher was discussing single patient trials. Hence there was no record of quantitative data, but the authors thought it was a good example of a systemic approach. It had also been well received when presented to groups of healthcare professionals. The editor does not believe that the results had been fabricated, but the lack of data does not guarantee… - News
Citations: Link, Locate, Discover, Connect
…assertion. References function for these purposes when they allow the reader to locate the work cited and validate, explore and allow understanding and further research. Citation indexes empower the essential functions of citation to link materials, to locate relevant works, to discover new papers through the network of connections created by the authors. Garfield described this essential feature… Reduced membership subscription fees policy
…reduction of membership subscription fees (free membership) Requests for free membership (that is, no fees) will be considered from journals that meet one of the following criteria: Journals based in Research4Life/HINARI countries. Journals in low and lower-middle-income countries, as- Case
Would the loss of a clinical licence in one country impact on the ability to do clinical work in another?
…one country impact a researcher’s ability to carry out clinical research in other countries?• Should the loss of license have been declared to the ethics committee that approved the study?… - 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
Professional misconduct of one author
…research publishing; however, although guidance is in place for how to handle cases of research and publication misconduct, there seems to no clear process or COPE flowchart for situations in which concerns have been raised about the alleged behaviour of an author. In line with our publishing model, we feel there are two possible approaches. The first would be to not allow removal of the… - Case
How many “mistakes” are too many?
We published a randomised trial by six authors. Some years later, we received a letter from a researcher who had been looking into the trial in the context of a meta-analysis. She noted “implausibilities of serious concern”, including “a highly unusual balance in the distribution of baseline characteristics”, 95% CIs that were non-symmetrical about the effect estimate, and use of… - Case
Findings of a published trial called into question by a subsequent audit of trial conduct
…The manuscript was revised and re-reviewed by this reviewer and a statistician; both were satisfied that the points had been addressed in the revision. After publication of the research article, our journal published two letters as correspondence. In one, the possibility of certain adverse events was raised, to which the authors replied that these had not been observed. The authors have… - Case
Authorship dispute involving a commercial institution
…Unfortunately, the main institution where the research took place is a commercial laboratory, and the last author of the manuscript is the chief executive officer of this business. The last author has been clear that they do not agree to adding the complainants as authors. In fact, they have stated that they are going to sue the complainants for their allegations. The journal has reached out to… - Case
Should we allow pseudonymous authorship?
We are handling a manuscript that is now ready for acceptance. During the review process we noticed that one coauthor had the surname "999" and this coauthor and two others had the affiliation "Independent researcher". We asked the corresponding author what this meant. Their answer was that the names of two of these three authors, including "999", were pseudonyms. The paper was based on… - News
COPE's eLearning course relaunched
…style="line-height: 1.538em;">Another five modules will be introduced in due course, on editor misconduct, reviewer misconduct, redundant publication, selective reporting and unethical research.… - News
COPE Workshop at 4th WCRI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 31–June 3, 2015
COPE will be leading a workshop at the 4th World Conference on Research Integrity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on publication ethics for editors, members of editorial boards and reviewers on Sunday May 31, 2015. This is an excellent opportunity for participants to discuss current trends in publication ethics, learn about how to handle possible misconduct… - Event
COPE Webinar: Allegations of Misconduct, April 2019
COPE is hosting an hour long webinar around the theme ‘Allegations of misconduct’, on Friday 12 April 2019, 4-5pm (British Summer Time). Our speakers are: Susan Garfinkel, Assistant Vice President for Research Compliance, Ohio State University, Ohio Tara… - Case
A falling out
A research letter was submitted from a team of investigators,A, B, C, and D. In their covering letter they reported that: A was involved in planning the study, collecting patient samples, and in writing the manuscript; B measured IL-10 polymorphisms and analysed the results; C was involved in supervising the measurement of polymorphisms and in writing the manuscript; D was involved in planning…