- 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… - Forum discussion topics
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here?
…comments Anyone (members and non-members) can comment. 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 - 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
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… - 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…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…