- News
Letter from the COPE Chair: November 2020
…– has the phenomenon of predatory publishing changed for you? For better or worse? Do you feel it is a problem that is harmful to your field? Is it impeding any work on your own journals? Are you involved in any new initiatives you’d like us to be aware of? Share your experience on our website. We have seen an… Publication ethics issues in AHSS: New study
…Marketing & Communications Officer Follow us on Twitter @C0PE About COPE COPE is committed to educate and support editors, publishers and others involved in publication ethics, with the aim of moving the culture of publishing towards one where ethical practices become the norm. Our approach is firmly in the direction of influencing…- Case
Legal advice
We took legal advice. It was felt that the risk of publishing allegations which respected bodies had already found to be unsubstantiated was too high, laying us open to a claim for defamation from the people the allegations were made about. We rejected the manuscript, stating that the decision had been made after taking legal advice. - Case
Ethical concerns about a study involving human subjects
…no record of. The author’s email address is not an institutional or company email address. We have contacted the professional society for the medical specialty of the author but they have informed us that the author is not a member and therefore they cannot investigate. We have also searched for the author on the registry of the regional medical board for the region in which the author is based,… - Case
Possible self-plagiarism and/or prior publication
In October 2014 it came to our attention via one of the reviewers of a manuscript submitted to our journal that an identical article (100% identical) had been previously published on the website of the author. The submitting author had not made us aware in their submission documentation that the article had been publicly available on their website at the point of submission. Two different but… - Case
Request to remove an author post-publication
…to a pseudonym be more appropriate here? Is retraction advisable if the journal editors do not have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable (as per COPE retraction guidelines)? Note that retraction would not remove author A’s name from the article. Does it make a difference whether the threat to author A’s safety is real or perceived? Author A could have contacted us to… - Case
Allegation of authorship misconduct
We recently received a complaint about an article which was published in our journal, which was originally sent to Journal X and copied to us. The complainant claimed that they had submitted an article to Journal X which was rejected. They alleged that their ideas and data had been leaked, stolen by another group of researchers, and published in our journal. We have asked the authors… COPE team
…To contact any member of the COPE team, please use our contact form. Natalie Ridgeway Executive Officer Natalie joined COPE in…- Forum discussion topics
Dealing with complaints about the integrity of published research
…can take a lot of time to determine which complaints are credible, especially comments received via social media. Some journals categorise complaints based on when the article was published. If the article is <6 years old it might be prioritised over articles older than >6 years. The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has a data retention policy of 6 years. Journals should… Equal Opportunities Policy
…Failure to make reasonable adjustments to alleviate disadvantages caused by a disability is also a form of disability discrimination. Disability discrimination If you are disabled or become disabled, we encourage you to tell us about your condition so that we can support you as appropriate.- News
Letter from COPE: June 2020
At this time we pay our respects to the memory of George Floyd, whose brutal killing has amplified issues of systemic racism in our society. We wish to voice our horror and outrage at the egregious violence, injustice, and marginalisation faced by people of colour in the US and throughout the world. We support all who stand against prejudice and discrimination of any kind. We wanted to… - News
In the news: December 2021
…article argue that it is, and that various cultural issues have “eroded the willingness of individuals to engage in the collective enterprise of reviewing each others’ work on a quid quo pro basis”. They describe the repercussions if authors publish more than they review and propose pathways toward greater reviewer engagement. The work done by reviewers is estimated to be worth more than US… - Case
Simultaneous publication
…reported in these two papers were obtained separately rather than the same results reported in two papers. In addition to those readers who sent emails to us, the reviewers of Paper X and a few editorial board members of Journal A who read these two papers all agreed that the two papers were highly similar. We contacted the office of Journal B and the Editor, and received a message… - Case
Ethics and consent in research
…help us to continue to raise that bar.” The author concluded that “IRB protocol modifications” were based on an acknowledgment that the researcher’s study violated patient rights, even if the study did not violate IRB rules. The author believes that journal editors have a responsibility to investigate allegations like these.… - Case
What involvement should a journal have in a dispute about an article published in the journal?
…received correspondence from a reader (hereon referred to as the “scholar”), who indicated he (used generically for simplicity without implication of the author’s or scholar’s gender) had contacted the original author directly and was concerned about the data used in the paper. The author also emailed the journal to advise us of his correspondence with the scholar, which had made him aware of oversights… - Case
Coauthor fails to respond to request to confirm coauthorship
Prior to publication, our journal requires coauthors to respond to an email to confirm their authorship status and the author list. A coauthor did not respond to these emails, and when we contacted the corresponding author for help, s/he told us that his/her attempts to reach the coauthor have failed, and that s/he believed the coauthor was attempting to hold the paper hostage. - Case
Dispute over submitted comment and the right to be forgotten
…writing to you in the spirit of fairness to offer you one final opportunity to do so. We would like your response in the next two weeks. If you need more time, please let us know when we can expect your reply. What we cannot do is let an article stand in the literature when scientific questions have been raised about it; in fairness to our readers, this sort of post-publication dialogue is essential. If… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar 2018: Creating and implementing data research policies
…among disciplines and research communities and that implementation is only the start of a “data sharing journey”. The second presentation was given by Todd Carpenter (Executive Director of the US National Information Standards Organization [NISO]). Noting that the number of research data policies is growing, Todd argued for the need for global… - Case
Should stockholders of a pharmaceutical industry declare conflicts of interest in a research paper?
…such guidelines. Both of the US Preventive Services Taskforce and the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence also have moved beyond a simple declaration of interest in these guidelines on managing conflicts of interest . Questions for COPE Council What is the… - 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…