- Case
Ethical approval and parental consent
A journal received a paper from a single author, attributed to a UK institution, in which 10 children were operated on using two techniques, each child having one technique to one side and one to the other side, at the same operation. The paper went to review, and neither reviewer spotted that this was a prospective surgical study on children, with no mention of consent or ethical… - Case
Prolific authors
…Wells F: Fraud and misconduct in biomedical research. BMJ Books, 1993), for example, Robert Slutsky published 1 paper every 10 days. Questions for COPE: (1) Is our suspicion of these authors reasonable, and at what levels do other editors become concerned about whether or not an author is truly deserving of authorship? - Case
Lack of patient consent for a case report, patient confidentiality
A case report was submitted to journal X reporting on a child who had been admitted to hospital suffering an injury, which the doctors suspected resulted from a deliberate cigarette burn. This was not proved until the child returned to hospital with other non-accidental injuries, and following a full criminal investigation the child’s parents were convicted of child abuse. Patient consen… - Case
Authorship dispute
Professor X claims that he should have been a coauthor on one of two peer reviewed publications and the senior author on the other. The situation is unusual in that Professor X is now retired and his name was omitted from coauthorship of both papers. Professor X argues that he should have been the senior author of the first manuscript since the funds to initiate the project were directly derive… - Case
More than a breach of confidentiality?
A journal received two manuscripts on the same topic in short succession.Manuscript A was rejected after peer review; manuscript B, submitted a few months later, was accepted after peer review. When manuscript B was published, author X contacted the journal to express concern about similarities between both papers and the fact that the first had been rejected and the second accepted. The… - Case
Fraudulent data presented in a manuscript
…about the result (ie, 100% procedure success rate). One of the peer reviewers, reviewer X, who works with author A at the same institute in Europe, and who was also acknowledged in the author’s submission, provided further comment. In his letter to editor, he stated that “I have reviewed some of their manuscripts more than 10 times, and I have refused to be associated with their research, because… COPE Forum
…peer review, editing of reviewer comments Predatory publishing Ethical considerations around book publishingCOPE webinar: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…Diversity, equity and inclusion in scholarly research and publishing Friday 28 May 2021, 13:00-14:30 (British Summer Time) (UTC + 1) Find out what time this is in your country Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar. The- News
Artificial intelligence and authorship
…users have pointed to examples where ChatGPT has misattributed or fabricated citations suggesting that its training data leans towards a fairly free and easy attitude to plagiarism. On the other hand, as it learns on more refined sets of… - Seminars and webinars
Post-publication critiques
…="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width/public/seminar23-webpage-post-pub-crit.jpg?itok=syKr4kux" width="1200" height="500" /> - News
Research integrity and how to buy a Persian carpet: TOP Guidelines, part 2
…Picture by Garry Knight (Flickr: Persian Carpet) CC BY-SA 2.0 at http://bit.ly/2FKpQCo In “The art of buying a carpet,” Simon Busch suggests that a wise carpet buyer checks a carpet’s knot count (“You will find much truth under the carpet: turn it… - News
Guest article: Research misconduct
…href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11948-021-00314-9">research the extent of research misconduct have found that a smaller proportion of researchers admit to committing certain types of misconduct themselves, than observing similar behaviour in their colleagues. Clearly, there are constraints to asking researchers about misconduct behaviour, even with the promise of anonymity. Journal article retractions have also been used to measure the extent of… - News
Text recycling: Lightning talk summary
…these recommendations, see Moskovitz, A; Hansen, D, and Yelverton, M. Legalize Text Recycling. Learned Publishing, May 2023. Questions from the audience What impact do licensing arrangements have? Standard licences (such as Creative Commons) generally state the rights that anyone has to reuse the material as long as the original… - Case
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the submission… Press
…transparency and best practice released 15 September 2022 The fourth edition of the Principles represents a collective effort between the four organisations to align the principles with today’s scholarly publishing landscape. Guidance is provided on the information that should be made available on websites, peer review, access, author fees and publication ethics. The…- Case
Academic freedom
A final year student, and two other researchers in law, all from the same university, undertook research into a recent court judgment on the rules in relation to civil servants making public comments. Based on this research, a manuscript was drafted to be submitted to a double anonymised peer reviewed journal. The manuscript is highly critical of the judgment’s reasoning and impact. All three a… - News
New: Chinese resources
…="https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_Guidlines_for_PeerReviewers_Chinese_Web.pdf">Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers Discussion document: What constitutes authorship? Flowcharts: Complete set of flowcharts - Forum discussion topics
Ethical considerations around book publishing
…technology to access individual chapters, without accessing the whole book, so ethical statements on a chapter level is desirable. Who is responsible for ethics in book publishing? If journal articles are published with a CC-BY license, can the author publish a similar article in a book as a chapter? From a copyright legal perspective this is allowed, as long as… - News
Research Integrity, Sixth Report of Session 2017-19 from the House of Commons
Following a 10 month inquiry, the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Committee has issued recommendations to strengthen requirements and improve compliance with the existing 2012 Concordat to Support Research Integrity [full report]. Compliance with new and existing standards… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: March 2021
…the author worked together. COPE has established a working group to develop guidance on this important topic of author name changes. The group is now shaping guidance for journals and publishers that we will share with you in the coming months. May 10 is the date of our next webinar, on…