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EQUATOR seminar and annual lecture
…="http://www.equator-network.org/courses-events/">http://www.equator-network.org/courses-events/ EQUATOR Annual Lecture:“Better reporting of better research = better healthcare: a patient plea” The lecture will be presented by Hazel Thornton, Hon. DSc., founding Chairman of the Consumers’ Advisory Group for Clinical Trials. Date: Monday 3 October 2011, 18:00 – 19:30Location: Bristol Marriott Hotel City Centre, Conservatory Room, Bristol, UK More… - Event
COPE Forum: Monday 13 May 2019
…take action 19-07 Correcting the affiliation of an author after publication 4. Updates 18-06 Retrospective registration, outcome switching and ethical approval 19-02 Dispute arising from peer review of a rejected comment and published correction Read the… - Case
Research involving unethical animal experimentation
A manuscript was submitted which described an intervention that partially corrected the results in stress injury in an animal model. Two reviewers drew attention to the fact that the stress model used in these experiments would not be ethically acceptable in the UK. The editor raised this with the senior author, who responded promptly stating that the work had already been presented at an inter… - Event
Paper mills meeting: WCRI2024
Monday 3 June 18:30-20:30pm WCRI2024 attendees are welcome to register for an in-person meeting of WCRI2024 attendees with active interests in paper mills, organised by Jennifer Byrne. The meeting will be held on Monday 03 June from 6.30-8.30 pm at the Megaron Athens International Conference Centre, after the conference… - News
Announcement of COPE Council elections
Due to vacancies on Council, we are seeking nominations for two new candidates. These are voluntary positions. Council is responsible for COPE’s policy and management. Council members are required to attend four meetings a year (two of which will usually be in person in London; the others may be attended by phone or other media). There is also a strategy meeting every 18/24 months which… - Case
Duplicate submission, self-plagiarism
The journal commissioned a Seminar that arrived in September 2004 and was sent for peer review. In March 2005, we received a peer reviewer’s comments pointing out a very similar paper by the same authors in another journal, published in December 2004. On careful comparison, there was over 70% text copied word-for-word, sometimes with trivial alterations, from the previous publication. - Case
Wrong version of article published. Should we retract?
The incorrect PDF version of an article was published together with the correct HTML, XML and EPUB versions. The variations between the PDF and other versions are language editing related, and do not affect the scientific value or scientific nature of the article. Questions for COPE Council Given that two version of the article exists, should the journal retract th… - Case
Authorship conflict
Author A contacted our journal following publication of a manuscript claiming that he was the rightful author. We asked the author for proof and he said that he had all of the data concerning the patient because he received the operative specimen and made the diagnosis. Author A said he also collaborated in writing the article with author B and hence was surprised that neither his name nor his… - News
Intellectual property focus
…commenting is a new development that should be addressed in publishing guidelines. Potential authors should be informed whether preprints (or other early versions, such as conference presentations) will disqualify a paper from journal publication. As advised in the COPE discussion document on preprints, journals also need to… - Case
Rights of reviewers
A clinical professor of medicine was asked to act as a reviewer for a submitted paper.The paper had not been presented publicly or in abstract form. The reviewer returned an extensive list of suggested alterations, but rated the paper highly. The other two reviewers also rated the paper highly, but suggested only minor modifications. The editor invited the authors to undertake a minor revision… - Case
A problematic obituary
A short obituary for a recently deceased doctor was received. Just before the issue went to print, one of the editors recognised the deceased as having been at the centre of disciplinary proceedings for having had a sexual relationship with a patient. As a result, he had been removed from the medical register for professional misconduct around two years before his death. This was not mentioned… - Case
Lack of ethics committee approval?
An editor received a paper and requested details of ethical approval from the authors. The authors replied that they had approached the ethics committee about carrying out a more extensive study than the one submitted, for which ethical approval was denied or possibly thought unnecessary - the authors’ English isn’t clear in their responses. Before the start of the more extensive study, the aut… - Case
Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript
An author submitted two manuscripts to our journal and the data were clearly fabricated, which was confirmed when we examined the original patient data files. The lead author admitted that they had only recruited a few patients and fabricated all of the remaining data and said that the co-authors had done this without their knowledge. We reported this to the institution, who conducted an… - Case
Retractions of primary literature papers: how should a review journal react?
…a significant chunk of time—and identified the parts that cite the six references. Those constitute around 18% of the body text, mainly the more novel insights. Qualitatively—and that is clearly more important than quantity—it is exceedingly hard to judge whether the retraction of the six articles nullifies those conclusions and insights. I should furthermore assume that the rest of the review is in… - News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…href="https://osf.io/4mfk2">https://osf.io/4mfk2 A call for vigilance, as authors are receiving acceptance letters for papers which have never been submitted to the journal.https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/04/18/paper-acceptedunless-letter-forged/ An editorial in Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research discusses how the… - News
COPE Asia-Pacific Workshop 2018: Report
…href="https://publicationethics.org/files/u7140/COPE_Preprints_Mar18.pdf">COPE Discussion Document on Preprints and invited the audience to contribute to the worldwide debate on the pros and cons of preprint platforms. Sharing the stage with John Inglis (co-founder of bioRxiv and medRxiv) and Sarah Tegen (Vice-President, Global Journals Development of the American Chemical Society, which co-owns ChemRxiv), Michael also took part in the panel discussion in the same… - Case
The perfect study but no investigational drug
A paper was submitted that described the use of a non-licensed investigational drug. One of the paper’s reviewers drew attention to the fact that none of the investigators in the study had been supplied with the drug since 1992/3. The drug is produced exclusively by one manufacturer who has operated an extremely restrictive policy regarding availability of the compound. I contacted the clinical… - Case
Triplicate publication with possibly different data in each
A paper describing an outbreak of infectious disease was submitted to three journals. The submission to one journal described the index case; the submission to another included investigation and follow up of other cases and contacts in the country where the outbreak had occurred. The third paper looked at the spread of the disease into other countries. A considerable amount of the epidem… - Case
Duplicate publication
The newly appointed editor of Journal A noticed that an article he had just published in his journal bore remarkable similarities to an article published a couple of months earlier in Journal B. When the editors of both journals discussed the matter, they confirmed that they had not been told about the other article. The authors work in a well established academic department. On detailed review… COPE policies
…amendments will be added here. Related content COPE position statements Page history Last updated 18 April 2023 Back to top…