- Case
Is ethics committee approval necessary for retrospective clinical studies?
…require an ethics committee approval as well as specific approval by the hospital director. The journal was not aware of what the laws were in the country where the study was conducted. The WMA Declaration of Taipei on Ethical Considerations regarding Health Databases and Biobanks (2016) clearly states in number 19 that: ‘19. An independent ethics committee must approve the establishment… - News
APAME and CASE Joint Convention 2018: Report
…Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and the 10 COPE Core Practices to the 250+ conference attendees. On 19 July, he presented some suggestions on how to improve scholarly journals for international indexing, focusing on promoting ethical peer review and publishing practices, developing clear journal guidelines that comply with all the… - Event
ISMPP Asia Pacific Meeting 2019
…target="_blank">www.ismpp.org/asia-pacific-meeting, and enter COPE19AP in the “Discount Code” field when you register. This special discount is available until 7 August 2019.… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical practice in research data publication - challenges, lessons and opportunities
… Over the past decade, we have seen a marked increase in the publication of research data, driven by journal, funder, and institutional policies. This has brought ethical challenges specific to datasets, which can affect the journal publication related to the… - Event
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… - Case
Possible deception because of omission of important information
A large study—parts of which have been published in several major journals— purported to show that a drug may reduce side effect X without acting through an important intermediate process Y. This suggests that the drug may have important advantages over similar drugs in its class, and indeed it had been marketed as such. But a critic thinks that the drug may indeed act through the intermediate… - Case
Lost raw data
In a nutshell, if someone has lost their raw data, workup data and laboratory books (so that in effect their data cannot be checked/queried/verified/substantiated) what would be the implications of submitting his/her results to a journal? I have a very clear view. I would not do it. However, others seem to think that if you cannot prove that the results are wrong, then they must be accepted on… - News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…to manage. The five most common problems include: claims of stolen data, methods, or intellectual content (31%); incomplete, inconclusive, or suspicious institutional investigations (18%); undeclared conflicts of interest (18%); misconduct in conducting, analysing, or reporting findings (19%); and duplicate publication or salami slicing (14%). Specific author behaviours leading to disputes… - News
Letter from the COPE Vice-Chair: August 2020
…to working with him. In this issue, we turn our attention to Ethical Oversight. During this time of COVID-19, many institutions are only partially open, with some researchers working remotely. Under these conditions, it is hard to maintain consistent oversight as workflows breakdown and pressures to push research forward mount. Despite… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: July 2021
Here we are, just past the halfway point of the year and the pandemic persists. We have seen great progress holding off COVID-19 in some regions of the world while others slide back as new strains appear. The UK is gearing up to remove COVID-19 based restrictions this month in an attempt to return to normal. But what is the new normal? Flexible work arrangements are becoming the norm and some… - Event
COPE Forum: Monday 5 November 2018
…their name, not retraction 18-19 Student thesis contains published article content 4. Updates 18-09 Editor manipulation of impact factor Read the cases and questions for the Forum #C0PEForum… - Case
The double review
An author submitted a review to journal A in February 1997. It was accepted for publication in November, after peer review. The same author submitted a review on a similar topic—sufficiently similar that there was substantial overlap of content—to journal B in September 1997. Journal B accepted it in January 1998, after peer review. Neither journal editor knew of the parallel paper. Jou… - Case
Overseas editor dismissed from university for fraud
…indicated the editor was the author or coauthor of 19 of the papers. Laboratory notebooks detailing the research had disappeared. The university committee stated that the study falsely presented data, and that these had been manipulated to produce the desired statistical results. The editor stated that there had been honest errors and that the laboratory staff had used poor research methods. The editor is… - Case
An anonymous letter in response to qualitative research
Some two months after publishing a piece of qualitative research about health behaviour in an ethnic minority group, an anonymous letter suggested that the work might be fraudulent. The letter was in very poor English, but made two main points. Firstly, the original study did not make clear how many women were included, and secondly, the anonymous respondent could not understand who could have… - Case
Complaint regarding letters to the editor
Our journal routinely sends letters commenting on published articles to the authors of those articles. This gives the authors an opportunity to respond to any criticisms. The letters and the responses are then considered together and we make a decision on which ones to publish. If a letter is not selected for publication, our usual practice is to send the author's response to the person… - Case
Correcting the affiliation of an author after publication
A manuscript was published in our journal in 2015, and at the time of publishing (as now), the author was a faculty member of a university. The author's affiliation was not declared in the article, just the author's qualifications. Now the author wishes us to correct the paper and list her affiliation in the article. Question(s) for the COPE Forum W… Action against paper mills
…recognise potential manipulation of the peer review process COPE infographic Retraction guidelines COPE guidelines Page history First published: 19 January 2024…- Case
Rescind a decision post-acceptance prior to publication
A paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal has recently been found to be unsuitable for publication. The authors have been highlighted in other journals for disseminating misinformation regarding the treatment of COVID-19. An expression of concern has been issued on another article, similar to the one we are close to publishing, in another publisher's journal. We looked into… - News
Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science
…href="https://osf.io/5z2n4/?view_only=c7e1c5ecb59f4b81962700a298dc0326">Hsiao & Schneider, manuscript). Science Magazine recently analyzed 200 post-retraction citations to two high-profile COVID-19 papers published in May 2020 and retracted in June 2020: over half of the citations did not mention the retraction; they noted that publishers and editors were "caught by surprise" and many do not systematically check for retraction or post-publication… - News
In the news: April 2021
…organisations embed a "dedication to equity and justice into everything a publisher does". COVID-19 The International COVID-19 suicide prevention research collaborative (ICSPRC)