- Case
Ethics approval for audit 2
A group in a developed country performed an audit of pregnancy and its outcome in a group of 250 women with congenital heart disease. There were four maternal deaths of women in the series. It was decided to write up the audit. The paper reports aggregated statistics classified by diagnosis, but also contains a brief account of the factors associated with the four deaths (an account of one of t… - Event
COPE Forum: September 2022
…cases. Submit a case to COPE Forum Do you have a publication ethics case you'd like to bring to the COPE Forum for discussion and advice? Submit a case The deadline to submit a case for this Forum is: Tuesday 13 September 2022. Forum agenda On 27 September 2022 the COPE Forum will be held at 16:00-17:30pm (BST… - Case
Multiple redundant submissions from the same author
An author submitted a redundant publication to one of our journals. After reviewing the report from the anti-plagiarism software, we followed the COPE flowchart up to and including contacting the author's institution. We have not received a response from the author or the author's institution. Shortly afterwards, the same author submitted a (different) redundant publication to one of our other… - Case
Parental consent for participants
…obtained. One view was that parents should have been informed for the younger aged participants (15 and 16 year olds). However, another view was that the benefits outweigh the risks, and that if the parents had been informed, that may have prevented the participants taking part in the study. The age of consent varies widely in different countries. If participants are over the age of consent for that… - Case
Request by organisation to retract article and publish expression of concern
A group of unspecified members of an organisation have written an expression of concern (letter via email) to the editors wherein they request that an article previously published in the journal be retracted since they believe it is biased and inaccurate about regulation details within the organisation. They are further requesting that their letter be published in the journal. The editor… - Case
Developing novel approaches to improve the assessment of absolute risk among patients with cardiovascular disease
The possibility of dual publication of two papers with almost identical titles and an identical list of authors emerged in the course of appointing a short-listing panel for an NHS award. The potential duplication was spotted in the publications list of an applicant for the award, who was not the first author on either paper. The editor of Journal A, in which one of the papers was in press, was… - News
In the news: June 2021
Each month, COPE Council members find and share publication ethics news. This month the news includes articles on intellectual property, preprints, peer review, and more. Data and reproducibility The Food and Drug Administration in the USA informed Accleron Pharma that… - News
International Workshop for Journal Editors, Indonesia
…-publishing">16 Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, the 10 COPE Core Practices, and practical advice on preparing to apply for COPE membership. Other workshop presenters at the event included representatives from Clarivate Analytics, SCOPUS, the… Increasing number of fraudulent papers produced by “paper mills”
…Press release 16 October 2020 Across research publications, publishers are increasingly seeing large scale manipulation of the publication process. “Paper mills” - producing fraudulent papers at scale - is one such manipulation. COPE members, with guest speaker Elisabeth Bik, recently discussed the issues surrounding- Event
COPE Forum: December 2022
…="https://publicationethics.org/case/reviewer-misconduct-and-its-potential-impact-submitted-manuscript">Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript 22-15 Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct 22-16 - Case
Seeking retrospective ethics approval
I received a submission that had asked a series of questions of visitors to a website about a mental health issue. It was reviewed by a senior colleague and myself. While the science was fine we were both concerned that no mention had been made of any ethics approval. I raised this issue with the authors, especially given that deception was involved. The authors then appear to have sough… - Case
Publication of expression of concern
A university institutional review board (IRB) investigation found that there was extensive data fabrication in connection with a clinical research study. Three articles and one abstract reporting results from this clinical study were published. Our journal published the abstract, which we intend to retract. The three articles have been retracted by the journals that published those articles. - Case
The role of the lead author
An author on a "perspective/consensus" type paper continues to provide new editorial as well as substantial content comments on consecutive versions of a paper, and currently disagrees with the content of the final version of the paper. The other eight authors have approved the final version of the paper prepared and circulated by the lead author. At this stage, the lead author sees no rational… - Event
COPE Forum: March 2023
…%3ESubmit%20a%20case%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%3Cp%3EThe%20deadline%20to%20submit%20a%20case%20for%20this%20Forum%26nbsp%3Bis%3A%20Thursday%2024%20November%202022.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%2D%2D%3E--> Forum agenda On Thursday 23 March 2023 the COPE Forum will be held at 15:00-16:30pm (GMT / UTC) 1. Update on COPE activities Update on COPE activities by the Chair. - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
The authors of a paper published in another journal wrote to the editor of Journal A, complaining of apparent blatant plagiarism of their work by N et al. , whose paper had been published in the journal earlier in the year. Further investigation revealed that the text of the two papers was almost identical. S et al. had used one drug and N et al. had used a different one of the same class. The… - Case
Author accused of stealing research and publishing under their name
We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student. Our journal is a fully English language publication and the accusing third party and author A are from a non-English speaking country, as is the student (assumedly). The accusing third party forwarded the… - Case
Publication of post-doctoral work
In 2012, Dr X started her post-doctoral training under a fellowship. She worked on the project until 2014, when the fellowship ended. She did all the work herself, and gave two seminars showing her results and progress, with positive feedback. When needed, she consulted with the supervisor or with a senior scientist in the laboratory (who has since resigned). By the time she finished, she had w… - Case
Ethical considerations in publishing conference papers
Journal X has recently received two manuscripts, which were previously published at a conference, with DOIs and publisher information. They contacted the authors with our concerns. Author A's manuscript was taken verbatim from their conference paper, yet they insisted that they own the copyright of the conference paper. They claim that they are free to re-submit the paper to Journal X, b… - Case
Effect of the British Human Tissue Acts on biological monitoring
…Authority for the storage of material from a human body (section 16e), for purposes which include “obtaining scientific or medical information about a living or deceased person which may be relevant to any other person (including a future person)” (Schedule 1). Most of the Act came into force in April 2006. The editor has been told by members of his Editorial Board that this is being deemed to… - Case
Paper B plagiarised paper A: what to do if a journal does not respond?
The author X of a paper published by journal A complained to the editor-in-chief of journal A that his/her paper has been plagiarised by a paper that has been published later by journal B. Moreover, the authors of the paper in journal B allegedly did not respond to letters sent by author X asking for an explanation about the apparent plagiarism. The editor-in-chief of journal A compared…