- 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… - 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… Membership subscription fees
…year 3751 to 4000 £65,838 3501 to 3750 £63,715 3251 to 3500 £61,325 3001 to 3250 £58,671 2751 to 3000 £55,751 2501 to 2750 £52,565 2251 to 2500 £49,114 2001 to 2250…- 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 Digest
…="_blank">https://www.hindustantimes.com/education/ugc-move-to-thwart-pay-and-publish-trash-culture/story-AP0BFFrbNuL1mN5WNbgCjI.html Peer review An experiment on peer review conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School, found that almost 50% of reviewers of medical funding applications changed their own ratings… - 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… 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
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… - Case
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
…information about conflict of interests and/or state which style guide it follows? Many biomedical journals follow the AMA Manual of Style which includes the following in section 5.5 of the current 10th edition: 'Financial interests may include but are not limited to employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony, royalties, patents (filed, pending, or registered), grants, and… - News
Reflections on the COPE North American Seminar 2019
…respondents were: lack of inclusive language (64%); plagiarism (58%); bias in comments by reviewers (55%); inappropriate responses by authors to criticism (54%); and self-plagiarism or text recycling (50%). Concerns about the future included language and writing skills, data issues, and artificial intelligence creating machine-authored manuscripts. More results will be available in a white paper to… - 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… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2022: Managing paper mills
…class="resource-download-inline__shadow"> Back to top STM Integrity Hub update Time on recording: 43:30-53:55 Joris van Rossum, Director of Research Integrity at STM gave an update on the STM Integrity Hub in relation to technical solutions,… 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.…- News
Welcome new COPE members April-June 2019
Welcome to our new members who have joined COPE between April and June 2019. The new members have been assessed against criteria outlined in the Principles of Transparency and signing up to COPE shows that they intend to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the