- Case
Inquiry concerning potential peer reviewer misconduct
A journal received the recommendation of a peer reviewer which expressed doubts about the validity of some of the data in an article. The editor-in-chief got in touch directly with the author and mediated to have the data validated by an outside contributor. The authors responded by providing data validation by a colleague, who is now becoming a potential coauthor. The initial data were… - Discussion documents
How should editors respond to plagiarism? April 2011
…Contents Aims and scope Background Introduction Types of plagiarism 2.1 Extent 2.2 Originality of copied material 2.3 Position / context 2.4 Referencing / attribution 2.5 Intention 2.6 Author seniority 2.7 Language Detecting and responding to plagiarism Screening for plagiarism Defining… - News
In the news: May Digest
…Factor remains embedded as a measure of success in the academic job market. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2019/04/26/the… - Case
Suspicion of breach of proper peer reviewer behaviour
An author submitted a paper for peer review with journal X on a topic that refers to a very recently published paper (ie, highly timely). The peer review was rather protracted because of long response times, reviewer substitution and the need to re-review the manuscript after a major revision. Just before the second decision was rendered, the author contacted the editor-in-chief with a s… Sample Letters
…Before publication Download .doc (28 kb) After publicationDownload .doc (24 kb) Figure manipulation Download .doc (26 kb) Change of authorship Before publication- News
COPE delegation, Beijing, 2017
A COPE delegation comprising the COPE co-Chair and Vice-Chair, Chris Graf and Deborah Poff, along with China based COPE Council members, Helena Wang and Jason Hu, and Japan based Council member Trevor Lane, me t with some of China’s leading science and research organisations in Beijing last month. - News
COPE at COMPARE Life Sciences Workshop on Authorship, UK
…contributions, e.g. with emerging standards such as the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). Key themes emphasised were the need to discuss potential authorship roles early in a project, to have conversations, for co-authors to speak up, and for transparency at… Expenses policy
…offences are not reimbursed. Related content All COPE policies Page history Last updated 26 August 2020 Back to top…- Case
Possible breach of confidentiality by a reviewer
One of the figures in an article under review was said by the authors to appear in a presentation given at a conference while the paper was still under review and from this identified the reviewer and accused this person of abusing their position. We could not confirm to the authors that they had correctly identified the reviewer. The authors contacted the reviewer directly and also contacted t… - Case
Attempt at dual publication
In October 2005, our journal commissioned a review on a specific topic from an expert in that field. The commission was accepted, and a submission date set. This was followed up and renegotiated several times over the coming months. A first draft was received in January 2007, and assessed inhouse for feedback to the authors. Some suggestions were made regarding structure and content, and the ma… - Case
Potential case of plagiarism
…submitted paper contains numerous full paragraphs identical to those in the previous paper. We also suspect that fraud may be involved. For example, the submitted paper reports data on 28 patients (72% male and 28% female); clinical sign 1 was present in 68%; sign 2 in 26%; sign 3 in 9% and one was asymptomatic. A particular investigation was diagnostic in 45%. In the first paper, 47 infants were… - Case
Publisher and stakeholder with misaligned conflict of interest policies
We have recently developed and begun to put into practice a policy on collection and declaration of conflicts of interest statements from any individual involved in contributing to or reviewing our pathways. This policy includes members of our editorial team, and contributor and reviewer members from our stakeholder groups. We have devised a standard form to collect these statements in a unifor… - Research
CrossCheck guidance: an analysis of typical cases of plagiarism in different disciplines 2010
…="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-013-1033-5">http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-013-1033-5 5. Zhang YH, Jia XY. Republication of conference papers in journals? Learned Publishing 2013;26(3):189–196. doi:10.1087/20130307 6. Zhang XX, Huo ZL, Zhang YH. Detecting and (not) dealing with plagiarism in an engineering paper: beyond. CrossCheck—a case study. Sci Eng Ethics DOI… - Case
Behaviour of researcher during peer review
An anonymised manuscript was sent to a senior faculty member (researcher A) of a well-known institute for peer review. The faculty member was known to have pedigree in publication on the topic of the manuscript for many years. The manuscript was rejected with comments. Based on editorial opinion and other comments, the manuscript was rejected by the editor-in-chief. Six weeks after rejection, i… - Case
Secondary analysis of medical records and ethics committee approval
A journal received a manuscript using secondary analysis of existing medical records in which there was no indication that ethics approval was obtained from a recognized ethics review board or that participants gave their informed consent to be included in the study. Instead, the authors explained that the study had been based on a secondary analysis of existing medical records and that no pati… - News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…-press-join-blockchain-for-peer-review-project-blockchainforpeerreview/with more details on the project in this slidesethttps://www.stm-assoc.org/2018_04_26_US_Annual_Conference_Day2_Innovations_van_Rossum_Blockchain.pdf Ethical oversight New research from… - News
In the news: July & August 2022
…Science, Space, Technology Committee met to discuss research integrity issues, including panel with Chris Graf, Jennifer Byrne, Brendan Steele. Page history Page last updated: 26 August 2022… - Case
An article in a high profile journal that potentially misappropriates research published in lower impact journals
It has been drawn to our attention that a paper published in a high-impact journal in the field of biological sciences (Journal A) draws very heavily on research published in the lower-impact factor journal for which we work (Journal B), as well as on work published in other journals. One of the authors of the paper in Journal B has contacted the editor of Journal A to register his/her concern… - Case
Author refuses to comply with editorial review prior to production and publication
The Editor-in-Chief of a journal received a message from a corresponding author of a brief communication, stating that the proposed editorial edits were beyond typical formatting edits at this stage. They felt said many edits were not appropriate, would need further response and suggested holding this article (which had already been in process with the journal for over a year) for the next edit… - Case
Author withdraws manuscript upon payment request
We occasionally come across a situation when an author withdraws a manuscript upon receiving a payment request. We consider this irresponsible, when much of the publication process has been completed by editors and reviewers. We request authors to provide payment details after the manuscript has been accepted for publication. The fees policy is published on our website and we require that the a…