- Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2021: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…published paper? In this single-response question, the majority of the audience (73%) had not encountered any situations of offensive material. However, in those that had, 85% of experiences resulted in retractions, suggesting that whenever issues are raised, the concerns are legitimate enough to require intervention. Yes several times – 7 Yes once – 16 No, it came… - News
In the news: April Digest
…for their office for research integrity and the same number had published at least 1 annual statement by 2018. https://peerj.com/preprints/27622/ A Scientific Integrity Consortium of 4 US and 3 Canadian government agencies, 11 professional societies, 6 universities and 3 nonprofit scientific organizations developed a set of 2 Scientific… - News
Vacancies on COPE Council
…Council. Having just reviewed all of COPE’s resources, I knew what a valuable supplement they were going to be for our editors, so it seemed only fair that I join as a way for us to give back. Not only have I been able to bring our perspective and experiences in the physical sciences to COPEs discussions, I’ve contributed on the Membership and Facilitation & Integrity Subcommittees to ensuring that… - News
In the news: April 2021
…with Nous listed has a correction made or is retracted, it may impact co-authors going forward. Instilling a lasting culture of scientific integrity into US federal agencies is promoted as being fundamental to guard against anti-science… Member Insight
…COPE Members to watch again. COPE and STM are embarking on a research project to understand more about paper mills. Would you like COPE Members to contribute to the research with your personal or professional experience of the problem? Let us know by filling in the website form. The latest in our series of…Code of conduct for COPE meetings and events
…href="https://publicationethics.org/privacy">COPE’s privacy policy for how COPE protects your data. Participants should respect any specific meeting rules, eg. Chatham House rules. For online meetings and events, participants should observe good practice, such as muting microphones when not speaking to minimise unnecessary noise. If using video,…- News
In the news: September 2021
…href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00663-2?sf245543134=1&utm_source=pocket_mylist">rates of burnout in the academic workforce in the US and Europe has increased since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, as documented by surveys. This is affecting people at all stages of their careers and is disproportionately affects marginalised groups. Digitial learning, work-from-home,… - Case
Possible fabricated data: a conspiracy of silence?
…basis of potentially unreliable evidence. It is plausible that this drug in high doses may worsen rather than alleviate the condition. Shortly after the withdrawal of the review, the journal was contacted by US researchers preparing guidelines for the management of this condition and by a UK group asking about the outcome of our investigation because the authors’ results were about to be incorporated… - Case
Confidentiality and consent in case reports
As recommended, we have spoken to the Information Commissioner for the DPA. He advised us that anonymised information could be published, and said that if the patient is not 100% sure that he/she is being described, then this is anonymised information. He said that it would nevertheless be best to ask for consent to publish a case history in its anonymised form. We filled out the… - Case
Concern about reporting of a trial and also its DSMB
…previous trial, and hence shows that the first trial was correct). Although the trial was investigator led, it seemed to us that the authors were trying very hard to make something positive out of this actually rather worrying result. We sent the paper for review, including to a statistician; the reviewers raised a number of issues about the interpretation (eg, the overemphasis on subgroup… - Case
Mislabelling/duplicate images
We were contacted by a reader who told us that he had spotted a number of cases of image duplication and mislabelling of fluorescent tags that had occurred over the past 4 years. These involved two papers published in our journal, and two other papers published in two different journals. The two papers in our journal were both reviews, and the one that had the most occurrences involved… - Case
Inappropriate authorship on students paper
…contributed significantly in the various steps of the research starting from topic selection, literature review, introduction, methodology, questionnaire, analysis, discussion and final review. I am further submitting that there is no conflict among us on any matter regarding the order of authorship.” The student also told me unofficially that they were coerced into signing this statement. The… - Case
Authorship dispute
…follows: author C (first author), author D and author E agreed with author B (claiming author). Author F did not respond, despite receiving five emails. In addition, author B sent us a letter signed by the Vice-Rector at his University, agreeing and supporting the point raised by author B. Author A (last author) disagreed with all of the allegations and pointed out the following.(1)… - Case
Scientific misconduct claim from a whistleblower where the institution will not investigate
…(ORI) website to check affiliations if the institutions are outside the US (there are some listings of cooperating national ethics approval boards). The Forum advised contacting the authors first before informing the institution. The institutions should also be informed of the whistleblower’s behaviour and the apparent falsification of email addresses to create the appearance of two… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship
…at UofG since 2015 leads the direction of travel for the university and what it values in research culture. Key to this is societal impact, and the people who are involved in the process: “A better research culture is not an alternative to excellence but rather it is what will enable more of us to excel”. - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…not sure if we are talking to the agents. The institutions are not responding to us. If there are extensive changes to the authorship list, we ask authors to provide institutional input. We ask for an email to be sent directly from the institute to the journal. Using an ORCID ID and insisting on ORCID IDs to confirm identity can help. But people can create a new ORCID ID if… 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: 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 - News
In the news: November 2020
…professional integrity, and politics overlap. It’s a sobering story-and one all of us involved in publications should take to heart. In a related paper, the steps taken by the Lancet to try to prevent similar problems in the future are discussed, with frankly… - News
COPE in 2023
…at various events in the coming weeks, and we invite COPE Members to join us for a Forum discussion on artificial intelligence and writing.…