- News
Artificial intelligence: Lightning talk summary
…New tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing January 2024 Lightning talk In the first of our new Lightning Talks Marie Soulière and Nishchay Shah spoke about new tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing.… - News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…Poff Read November Digest newsletter with a focus on Ethical Oversight and a letter from the COPE Chair. We also share the new COPE Retraction Guidelines and invite members to join us on COPE Council to help with the work of COPE. Plus the monthly update on… - News
Vacancies on COPE Trustee Board
…stakeholders for the people who benefit from well conducted and well communicated research: us all. That’s of pretty central importance in our world, and it’s inspiring. Thanks, COPE, for everything!" Charon Pierson reflects on her time as a COPE… - News
In the news: December 2018 Digest
…was the article about colleagues and predatory journals the straw that broke the camel's back for the school administration or was it the only reason? This is an interesting case of academic freedom, faculty behavior, and human nature. The predatory journal angle is perhaps just the hook that gets us interested. India has been identified as a major market for predatory journals. The… - News
Case discussion: Suspected plagiarism
…remedies over reporting to an institution. Conversely, where the editor feels the author acted with an improper intent, it is worth remembering that the institutions where the authors work have much better access to conduct an appropriate investigation. In cases involving funding from the U. S. government, the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) classifies serious plagiarism as misconduct and… - Case
Request for a retraction of a retraction
…be shown to the university’s investigational committee was “the fault of the administration” and not the main author. We have been unable to obtain the report of the university’s investigational committee. The Faculty of Medicine’s Dean at that time told us, in January 2007, that his published letter (at the time of the retraction) was a translation of the committee’s decision, which… - Forum discussion topics
Editing of reviewer comments
…reviews". There is a disproportionate negative impact of hostile comments on women, non-binary people and members of underrepresented minorities. This is an opportunity to educate reviewers. The review should not be used unless the language is amended. We post our requirements for reviewers on our website stating that if you agree to review for us, you also agree to behave in a professional… - News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…as possible, be able to repeat such unusual experiments”. In a Nature blog post, Philip Stark argues that much of the problem with reproducibility of scientific work likes in the failure to describe the methods sufficiently to meet Boyle’s requirements. He calls this a failure of “preproducibility” and encourages all of us to follow his lead: decline review of papers with insufficient information… - News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute - university perspective comment
…href="https://nhmrc.gov.au/about-us/publications/australian-code-responsible-conduct-research-2007" target="_blank">Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, 2007 (the Code) guides institutions and researchers in responsible research practices. Part B of the Code provides a framework for institutions for dealing with allegations of potential research misconduct. Institutions must ensure that all Investigations are procedurally fair. Institutional investigations apply to only… - News
In the news: October-November 2021
…anonomyous survey of > 10,000 researchers at 200 leading universities in the US. Furthering this work, researchers who listed false investigators attracted 70% more funding than those who did not. There are some who consider this a form a research misconduct, perhaps similar to guest authorship. Open science Provocative description of the - Case
Concerns over research by an author in numerous, separate publications
…author’s publications as he was working in a similar area. For reasons to do with his own experience as a scientist, he was sensitive to possible fraud which is why he felt obliged to bring his concerns to the attention of the journal editors. The editor of our journal was convinced he was sincere. A retired UK allergist who said he knew author K contacted us to say that he believed that the… - Case
Author of rejected letter blames global bias against his message and undisclosed conflicts of interest
…investigate in accordance with COPE’s guidelines, particularly in relation to our disclosure policy. Although the author of the letter accused us of being in breach of the COPE policy on fair peer review in an earlier correspondence, he then replied that in this case COPE’s ‘concepts’ are meaningless and, for example, anonymous peer review or impartiality are impossible, since he is the only researcher “who… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2020: Understanding text recycling
…with their publications. But I just want to understand how the law allows these two contradicting provisions. Is it possible to come to a middle ground and prepare the Copyright Agreement in a way wherein the rights of both the publisher and the authors are restored and balanced accordingly? US law does, in fact, allow publishers to word contracts in such a way as to have authors… - News
Citations: Link, Locate, Discover, Connect
…link between two records. These links can then clarify and expand the reference data, allowing us to display a single, authoritative form of the citation. When JCR is produced, all references cited in any of the Web of Science Core Editions[2] from the completed prior year are extracted from our central production database. When those citations are linked to a source item in the journal, we use… - News
Predatory behaviour in publication ethics
…retractions as a result risk negative attention. Smaller journals and publishers are inevitably less able to handle this volume of work. Nonetheless, we must continue in our efforts to detect, prevent and correct these profit-driven and high-volume infractions of publication ethics. There is too much at stake for us to do anything else. Alysa Levene, COPE Operations Manager New UK Panel for Research Integrity
…modelled on a body already in existence, to which John Pritchard responded that it was broadly in line with the Scandinavian and US models. Iona Heath questioned how sponsorship from the ABPI squared with public confidence in the independence of the new body? The Health Select Committee had recently pronounced on the pharmaceutical industry, so perhaps this was not…- News
In the news: December Digest
…invite you to add your comments. Join us in determining the next steps for our fictional research integrity officer, Jo, who we introduced in March this year. Plus the monthly news roundup and events coming up in 2020. Read December Digest: Top 5 cases 2019… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…journals in terms of reviewers or papers being published is that journals do not always know the characteristics of their reviewers or authors. It might be easy to evaluate geographic diversity, but the gender or ethnicity of reviewers is not easily identifiable unless that information is appropriately captured. Data will tell us if we are making improvements, if diversity is increasing, and if… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2022: Managing paper mills
…legal barriers to naming individuals in any type of misconduct case. How can I check whether an editor at one of our journals has been asking for publication fees from authors (publishing with us is free)? It is difficult to comment on a specific case without knowing all of the details. In this case it seems you have two major concerns; the conduct of the editor and the quality of… - News
In the news: July 2021
…Open science The 2013 US federal mandate that any data collected using federal funding be open and accessible to the public resulted in the requirement by four major federal agencies that fund education sciences research that applicants include specific data sharing plans as part of their grant applications. The authors of this paper note however, that