- News
Case discussion: gift authorship
…authorship came from further study of 81 of the hyperprolific authors. Of the 27 authors who completed a survey, 19 admitted failing to meet one of the four ICMJE authorship criteria in more than a quarter of their papers and 11 admitted failing to meet two or more… - News
Case discussion: Editing peer review comments
…transparent about what comments could be shared (and although not stated, stick to those policies). There was no COPE comment regarding editing of the reviewer comments. In 2011 case 11-22, the corresponding author requested that her or his co-authors be restricted from seeing the reviewer comments directly due to… - Case
“Medical research” using data in the public domain
…site containing the same elements as the data used in the author’s study. The author also stated that as these data were in the public domain, the project was exempt from the requirement for ethics review as per the following two guidelines for ethics in human research: (1) Tri-Council Policy Statement, Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, Canada, 1998, Article 1.1(c) "Research about… - Discussion documents
Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making
…href="https://publicationethics.org/news/challenge-ai-chatbots-journal-editors">The challenge of AI chatbots for journal editors, guest editorial, February 2023 Trustworthy AI for the future of publishing COPE Seminar 2021 COPE Forum
…peer review, editing of reviewer comments Predatory publishing Ethical considerations around book publishing- Case
Profusion of copied text passages
…in the region of 25% to >35%. These are substantial values and certainly beyond fortuitous incidences. However, in almost all cases it is difficult to suspect acts of conscious (self)plagiarism as the copied text (ranging from single sentences or fragments of sentences to passages of 2–3 sentences) can be attributed to a very large number of sources: often more than 60, and in one case… - News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…office of persons responsible for research governance at the institution. The flowchart “What to do if you suspect an ethical problem with a submitted manuscript.” (https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.19) The other relevant COPE guidance is the document “Cooperation between research… - News
In the news: March Digest
…16. www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/02/19/2020-03189/request-for-information-public-access-to-peer-reviewed-scholarly-publications-data-and-code Predatory Publishing David… - Case
Exposing citation manipulation and fraud in the community
A publisher has identified a ring of three individuals who acted as guest editors for three special issues. These individuals used nine fake accounts to peer review manuscripts. For some manuscripts, the fake identities were used alongside legitimate reviewers, while in other cases they were used exclusively. The publisher has also identified several submissions to those special issues where th… - Case
Data availability for vulnerable populations
A paper on a vulnerable population was published in a journal. The journal followed their usual procedures for processing papers on vulnerable populations, by requesting and reviewing further information on the ethics approval and consent procedures of the study (e.g.: recruitment procedures; blank version of the consent document participants read and signed; the study protocol that was approve… - Flowcharts
Systematic manipulation of the publication process
…process COPE guidance 2023 Paper mills research report COPE & STM, 2022 How to recognise potential manipulation of the peer review process COPE infographic - News
In the news: November 2018 Digest
…findings. COPE Council member Deborah Kahn Read November Digest: Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections… - Case
A case of scientific misconduct?
…authors wrote back to us, cc'ing the heads of their two research ethics committees, to say that indeed, the manuscript did not match the two different protocols they sent us. They explained that there was a fault in the manuscript and not in the work carried out. They explained that the paper they sent us did not describe a single study but rather parts of 4 different approved studies taking place over… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: January 2020
…update on the status of research integrity in China which is included in this issue. Also, ICMJE has recently posted a very helpful set of “recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of… - Case
Possible suppression of data
This is a summary of a problematical research interaction between a pharmaceutical company and academic collaborators at a University involving a widely used drug. A pharmaceutical company appears to have exerted undue influence in an attempt to control the scientific literature. The research involved an important retrospective secondary endpoint in the three key… - Case
Removal of an author
A paper was submitted to a journal with authors A, B, C, D and E. The paper was peer reviewed. Before acceptance, the corresponding author asked for a new author, author F, to be added, and an existing author, author C, to be removed. The editorial office asked all of the authors (authors A, B, C, D, E and F) to complete a change of authorship request form and for the corresponding autho… - 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
Does co-publication of an editorial constitute duplicate publication?
A publisher co-published an editorial across its portfolio of six journals. Co-publication was clearly flagged in each journal. Subsequently, there was a discussion on PubPeer on the editorials, with one comment suggesting that co-publication is the same as duplicate publication. The publisher believes that editorials that do not report on the results of research and which… - Case
Lack of trial registration leads to new concerns about study conduct and ethical review/approval
Following publication of an article, the editors noticed that the paper reported results of a clinical trial, but no details of trial registration were included in the article. (The journal does have careful checks on trial registration by staff at submission but this paper was not well written and it took careful reading to work out that it did in fact report on a clinical trial). We co… - News
In the news: February 2018 Digest
…> By comparing the likelihood that authors publishing in two different journals publishing articles about biostatistics would share their data and their code, the authors studied whether the receipt of a badge to go on an online journal denoting data and code sharing…