- 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
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…Commentary). It has been good to see that there is a lot of optimism about new initiatives in peer review, but there is also some consensus that many aspects of scholarly publishing have been stretched almost to breaking point by recent rapid changes in scholarly publishing. These include open access and data sharing, fraudulent behaviour, the growth of journal… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…in response to the kinds of diversity seen as being important in peer review. Two of the fifteen new reply options to this question in the 2021 survey also garnered significant responses, with 67% of respondents indicating that Career Level was important and 63% indicating that Geographic Diversity was important. The importance of Expertise Areas/Specialities decreased by 27% (from 88… Foreword, COPE Report 2005
…their houses in order. Two things at least are at stake: the public’s trust in biomedical science and, since research feeds into patient care, the public’s safety. What is COPE’s role in all of this and what has it contributed in 2005? COPE was established in 1997 as an ad hoc self help group for medical journal editors. Since then it has grown into a properly…FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…approval, added below. Please login as a member or register as a non-member to post comments…- Case
Salami slicing/duplicate publication
…editor might like to look at intent and perhaps have a discussion with the author to get clarification. A correction could be added to the second paper to indicate that it is linked to the previous paper. Retraction would only be appropriate if there was intent to slice the data or if there is major overlap in the results in papers from journal A and B and if the first paper is not cited. - News
In the news: May Digest
…reviews has been commented on in a number of places including Physics Today and Science. A survey showed that nearly half of respondents had ghostwritten a peer review report, despite the 80% of them having the opinion that ghostwriting is unethical. - News
Letter from the COPE Vice-Chair: December 2022
…membership criteria, offering guidance and mentorship to support them in developing best practices in publication ethics. Making membership criteria transparent and mapping the application process to these criteria. It is worth noting here that we currently reject approximately 80% of all applications which do not meet our strict assessment criteria, many from countries outside of the… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2021: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…published paper? In this single-response question, the majority of the audience (73%) had not encountered any situations of offensive material. However, in those that had, 85% of experiences resulted in retractions, suggesting that whenever issues are raised, the concerns are legitimate enough to require intervention. Yes several times – 7 Yes once – 16 No, it came… 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
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… - News
In the news: July Digest
…translation of articles and republished in another language under a different author name https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/theo.12188 Authorship and contributorship Single author papers are declining globally and across all disciplines… - Forum discussion topics
Best practices for guest edited collections
…the number of articles or special issues that can be hosted by a journal editor or editorial boards. This can promote guest edited content to circumvent the cap. It is preferable to address the root causes of unethical practices around collections rather than adding cap numbers at the end of the process. There are positive aspects to special issues and guest-edited collections, including… - 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…