- Case
Professional misconduct of one author
…a valid reason for issuing a correction to the literature. Moreover, if ICMJE authorship criteria are being used, the reason for removal of an author needs to be added; it must be an academic reason; and all authors would have to agree and sign off in… - News
Artificial intelligence: Lightning talk summary
…The checks carried out by AI are done at various stages: as part of initial verifications, as peer review is initiated, and as it continues. Sometimes flags are raised late in the process, for example, if new data have been added to the training bank after the article went into the process. Deciding when to run checks is a complicated process, especially when a manuscript is also changing as it… - Case
Conflicts of interest between authors and editors
…should declare this and not participate in the peer reviewer assignment or any editorial decisions, and a note should ideally be added in the paper about the independence of the peer review process. If the editor were already an editor in the previous articles and took part in their review process, their peer review has been compromised. A post-publication peer review would be needed with an… - News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…Major philanthropic organizations, like the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust don’t yet require sharing of results. The reason for concern per Dr.Bruckner: over $85 billion invested into medical research goes to waste every year because results are not available. http://www.peah.it/2018/05/5322/ On May 25th, the EU’s General Data Protection… - News
Letter from COPE: June 2020
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/cope-forum-6-march-2020-editing-reviewer-comments">website. Stay healthy and stay safe. Nancy Chescheir & Caroline… - Case
A lost author and a new hypothesis
A paper was published in January 1998,and seven authors were credited. B was thanked for his contribution in the acknowledgements section. One year later B wrote to the editor, outlining two alleged incidents related to this paper. First, the cohort reported in the January 1998 paper was one that B had been working on since the early 1990s. In 1992–3 he sought collaboration with another researc… - News
Case discussion: critiques after publication
…can be contacted and an expression of concern added in the interim. If the author remains uncooperative, the editor is bound to retract the paper for the sake of not misleading readers, researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and other stakeholders. The retraction notice should transparently explain what post-publication review procedures were followed and what happened. As an additional… Text Recycling: Forum discussion topic March 2013
…should amend the literature by adding the missing citation and clarifying what is new in the subsequent publication versus the original publication. Journal editors should consider publishing a retraction article when: There is significant overlap in the text, generally excluding methods, with sections that are identical or near identical to a previous publication by the same…- News
In the news: August
…="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/07/21/book-review-research-ethics-in-the-real-world-by-helen-kara/" target="_blank">https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/07/21/book-review-research-ethics-in-the-real-world-by-helen-kara/ Misconduct Jennifer A Byrne is a cancer researcher who is committed to cleaning the literature as much as she is to adding to it. She began her crusade to do so after noting… - News
In the news: January Digest
…behavioural research. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0772-6 Ethical oversight ICMJE recommendations have been revised. The main changes are rephrasing COIs to relationships and activities, adding efforts for inclusion and diversity, and advising against citing predatory… - News
In the news: January 2019 Digest
…this could be rectified and argues the case for changing the cultural norms to allow this.https://psyarxiv.com/exmb2 COPE Council member Deborah Kahn Read - 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
Who ensures the integrity of the editor?
An editor came across a letter from the editor-in-chief of his journal to a reviewer that asserted he had recommended the acceptance of a manuscript. He had in fact recommended the opposite, both verbally and in writing. The paper in question was a guideline on the therapeutic choices for a relatively common medical condition. The authors had claimed their conclusions and therapeutic recommenda… - 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
In the news: June 2021
…misbehaviours. This article describes the work being carried out by the Centre for Journalology, which researches, teaches and performs outreach on metascience, the use of scientific techniques to study the research process itself. Intellectual Property A - 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… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars-and-webinars/dei-in-practice-panel">Driving diversity, equity, and inclusion to shape the future of publication ethics, COPE Seminar 2021 Diversifying editorial boards, article, 2021 Your comments Anyone (members and non-members) can comment on this discussion. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below.… - 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