- 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… - Forum discussion topics
What does peer review mean in the arts, humanities and social sciences?
…include adding non-native speakers to editorial boards to advise from a high level perspective in an important way; editors entering retirement offering mentorship outside the publication process; for society journals, pairing society members internationally with published mentors and see if they can meet the authorship criteria Post your comments and feedback below. - News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute - university perspective comment
…for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2018 (the Guide). Section 8.1 of the Guide provides for ‘Collaborative research across multiple institutions’ and states: ‘Institutions should consider how preliminary assessments and investigations into potential breaches of the Code are to be conducted for multi-institutional collaborations on a case-by-case basis, taking into… - Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…publication. Learned Publishing. 2023; 36: 73-80. Doi:10.1002/leap.1533 AI in decision making, COPE discussion document Trustworthy AI for the future of publishing, COPE Seminar… - News
In the news: April 2018 Digest
…servers varied little from their final poublished versions, suggesting the commercial publishers’ added value is limitedhttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00799-018-0234-1 Peer review fails to prevent publication of paper with unsupported claims about peer review A recent publication,… - News
Citations: Link, Locate, Discover, Connect
…target="_blank">http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/jcr1975introduction.pdf [2] Cited references from the Book Citation Indexes were added as contributing materials to the JCR in 2018, and are included in the recently published 2017 Journal Impact Factors and other JCR metrics. The set of content whose citations are included in the JCR now comprise: Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Sciences Citation Index, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Emerging… - 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.… - News
In the news: August 2018 Digest
…one group of authors in Science showed that 1/5 respondents were coerced into adding citations and findings were similar in a study of PLOS ONE authors. The specter of citation cartels among participating journals—you scratch my back, I’ll cite your paper. The author of this post suggests that an automated algorithm, similar to what is used by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to detect… - News
In the news: July 2021
…tenure decisions. This index can be gamed by excessive self-citation and there are instances of authors adding references at the revision stage of the peer review process after there is likely to be scrutiny of the reference list, producing in an “h-index factory“. The author proposes for these, and other reasons cited in the post, that the community of researchers and publishers need to “ - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…is not necessarily a sign of a paper mill submission but if there are other red flags, it can be useful. Some additional features have been added. The original features for the tool were to protect against reviewer fraud and a report would only be issued after peer review. A new setting (low, medium, high) can raise an alert if there is a high rate of submission from the same device. Would it be… - News
In the news: May 2020
…that predatory journals are adapting, to "look" more like legitimate journals. The use of peer review appears to be increasing. These authors sent a previously published journal article to over 600 journals, a mix of predatory, legitimate open access and subscription-based journals. The paper was rejected by about 95% of the journals, but only about half of these were for ethical concerns. They… New UK Panel for Research Integrity
…instances occur. Project approval was granted through to September 2004. Professor Michael Farthing was appointed to lead the project on account of his expertise in the field and as former chair of COPE. One of the first tasks was to survey the membership to look at the nature and prevalence of research misconduct. Seventy per cent of the membership (86 members)…- News
Case Discussion: Lack of trial registration leads to new concerns about study conduct and ethical review/approval
…institution, who was not a co-author and wished to remain anonymous, informed the editors that the ethics committee named in the article did not exist at the institution. After not hearing back from the authors, the editors added a Comment to the article alerting readers of non-adherence to clinical trial requirements. The authors later said that ethics approval had been granted by another… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 2: COPE commentary
…knowledge to fully understand the capabilities and threats presented by AI. On the potential for personal information to make its way back into training data, for example, Dustin Smith (a self-declared ‘AI optimist’) was quite clear. Where LLMs are trained on closed data sets (that is, with no new information added to it over time), there is little risk of material submitted to it reappearing in… Membership application FAQ
…membership is accepted? When your application is accepted, you will receive an email confirming this. You will receive a link to COPE’s Member Handbook which details the benefits of being a COPE member as well as how to manage your membership. If membership fees are applicable, an invoice will be sent to you. Once your membership fees are paid, your journal details will be added to our…- News
In the news: December Digest
…international group of authors in Ophthalmology topics selected 200 references from PubMed and then checked them for Open Access status. Those that were paywalled were examined to see if they were available at established institutions in low income countries or through HINARI. There was a lot of heterogeneity from 0% full texts to 95%, with a mean of 47% availability. Use of complementary "alternative ways"… - News
Case discussion: gift authorship
…authorship came from further study of 81 of the hyperprolific authors. Of the 27 authors who completed a survey, 19 admitted failing to meet one of the four ICMJE authorship criteria in more than a quarter of their papers and 11 admitted failing to meet two or more… - News
In the news: February Digest
…were male and younger”. Only 8.1% of reviewers opted to reveal their names and the authors suggest that this supports the view that peer review depends on anonymity. Preprints Papers with involve human subjects or their medical records will not be accepted by 4 major orthopedic journals if they have been posted on a preprint server. The editors of the journals jointly published an… Common editorial dilemmas: hypothetical cases
…conclusions, adding that your last letter to them stated you would accept the revision if they took into account the reviewer's comments, which they have done in full. Discussion The editor has already said s/he would accept with minor revisions, which had been done. Arguably the onus is on the editor to accept this article.…- Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2022: Managing paper mills
…processes? They are probably equally concerning. They are both bad in terms of contaminating the published record, but they operate in a slightly different way. And paper mills and predatory publishers can overlap eg predatory publishers may run paper mills. We need more research to understand this. Are there any legitimate reasons for adding an author after acceptance? We have seen…