- Case
Allegations of scientific fraud and unethical conduct of experiments with attempts to silence the whistleblower
…The allegations of fraud A paper reported a radioisotope test for diagnosis of a speci?c,acute,neurological disease with 100% accuracy. Replication studies failed to con?rm the ?ndings and suggested that the test is positive in a… - 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. - Case
Omitted author
A case series of 89 patients with a relatively rare condition was accepted for publication by the journal following due process through the peer-review system. The paper was published online within days of being accepted. A few days later the editor of the journal received an email from a professor (Professor X) from the same country from which the paper was submitted to say that one of the… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…href="https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/peer-review-terminology">standard peer review terminology to aid transparency and understanding of these differences. Others have started inviting specialist statistical review, or setting up ways of awarding credit to reviewers, for example, by publishing lists of reviewer… - 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… - 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… Presentations
…Responsible? Download PDF (88 kb) Presented by Jeremy Theobald At the US National Academy of Sciences and PNAS E-Journal Summit Washington, DC, USA 18 March 2008 2007 Dual use: editorial freedom and how editors will COPE Download PDF (660 kb)…- 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
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…- 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… - 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.… Seminars
…22kB] Poster: Fraud and deceit in medical research Download [PDF 22kB] Poster: Authors’ awareness of publication ethics: An international surveyCommon 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
In the news: December Digest
…-we-choose-to-align-open-access-to-research-with-geo-political-borders-we-negate-the-moral-value-of-open-access/ A 2016 survey with a 17% response rate (507 of 3000) researchers in the Global South from the AuthorAID network explored their attitudes and experiences with open access publishing. About 40% noted limited or no access to academic literature. 89% always use Google to search for literature. 17% had deposited research into institutional repositories. 70% thought that OA research was useful or… - 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… - 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