- 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… 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… - Case
Repetitive duplicate submission to multiple journals and redundant publication
…submitted to J8, J2, and J7. J2 contacted J8 about possible duplicate submission. J8 rejected MsD based on reviewer reports and also added a note to the author informing them that there had been a report of possible duplicate submission with their Ms. The abstract of MsD has been found to be identical to the abstract of an article published in June 2005 in J10 with the exception of two… - Case
Breach of peer review confidentiality
…longer presented in such terms, in the revised manuscript. That observation further added to the author's and editor's concern that the revised manuscript had not been judged properly, or even at all, by reviewer B, and that the process of peer review had been compromised in several ways. An inevitable conclusion is that the peer review of this manuscript was compromised in respect of the… - Case
Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article
…basis of any professional or personal opinion the reviewer or editor may hold. Any revisions that result from post-publication peer review will be added to the published article as an erratum along with a disclosure of the editor-in-chief’s conflict of interest. As an alternative to post-publication peer review, should the publisher issue a statement attached to the article confirming the… - Case
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
…Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee for further inquiry. Finally, Journal B could consider adding an editorial statement to the article noting that the prior publication in Journal A is redundant and it is the version in Journal B which is the true record.… - Guidelines
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
…from among the community of libraries and other academic disciplines to assist in the curation of open access journals. This independent database contains over 18,100 journals covering all areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts and humanities in English and 80 other languages. DOAJ is financially supported worldwide by libraries, publishers, and other like-minded organisations.… - Case
Simultaneous publication
…X was published in Journal A about 3 weeks before Paper Y. The two paper superficially do not look similar and Paper X contains results that are not in Paper Y. However, the two papers also contain highly similar results and make similar key conclusions. Truth be told, all of the additional results presented in Paper X were added during revisions. The authors of Paper X knew that Paper Y had been… - Case
Requesting authorship after publication
…believed that an acknowledgment was appropriate, but then recommended the addition of Dr H as an author. We maintain that an acknowledgment is appropriate, and that adding him as an author without fulfilling ICMJE criteria (journal policy) would be the equivalent of gift authorship. Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Based on ICMJE criteria and journal policy, does the Forum believe… - Case
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
The editorial team took the feedback from the COPE Forum on board and notified the corresponding author’s institution of the allegations; the case is still being considered by the research integrity team at the institution. In addition, an editorial note has been added to the article to alert readers that concerns had been raised about the overlap between the original article and the student’s… - Case
Dispute over submitted comment and the right to be forgotten
…we have not heard from you, we will publish the comment without your reply'. If the authors refuse to reply formally and answer the points, then an editorial note can be added that the authors were invited but declined to reply. Ultimately the decision of how best to correct the literature should fall to the editor, so the complication that the new editor-in-chief does not want to be… - Case
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
…that it had not been consulted or involved in drafting the article, and added that none of its members was an author on the paper. In the paper, there is only mention of the consensus between the two scientific societies in the title, and the body of the paper only includes the actual clinical recommendations. Moreover, the authors of the published article only included their clinical affiliations… - Forum discussion topics
Coordinating multi-journal complaints
…Related resources Dealing with concerns about the integrity of published research COPE discussion document Your comments Anyone (members and non-members) can comment on this discussion. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below.… - Case
Ethical conduct of qualitative research studies
Publishers are seeing an increase in submitted data generated from qualitative research studies. These studies are answering important questions such as identifying unmet need or highlighting the lived experience, potentially adding real value to the body of evidence especially in rare diseases. They are often Pharma funded and / or patient advocacy group led. Many of these studies have… - Case
Rescind a decision post-acceptance prior to publication
…saying people will try to pay us to shut down the paper before it is published. This has added an extra layer of concern to how the situation is handled. We think we should take the following steps: Contact the author to explain the manuscript requires further peer review. Send the manuscript for two further sets of peer review comments. Provide the author with the new set of…