- Case
Dealing with cases with culturally offensive content
…The Forum agreed that further guidelines will be useful. The forthcoming COPE guidelines will address some of the issues reviewed here and other resources can be found below: Simone Ragavooloo, Helen Macdonald and Kamran Abbasi, ‘Acting on historically offensive content in BMJ’s archive’, BMJ 2022; 378:o1829 doi… - News
In the news: June Digest
10/06/19 Peer review Peer review is the hallmark of scientific and scholarly publications. These authors explore 5 principles of good peer review and suggest ways for journals to use these to underpin best practices. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/leap.1222 In… - News
Case Discussion: Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
…discussion document which will be ready, on our website, early this year. Nancy Chescheir on behalf of the COPE Education Subcommittee Read January 2019 COPE Digest newsletter and use the COPE… - Case
Paper submitted for publication without consent or knowledge of co-authors
An article was submitted by corresponding author (CA) on 19 December 2011. After several revisions the article was accepted for publication on 23 March 2012. The article was published online 8 May 2012.At the time of submission, CA was a PhD student at a research centre (X).On 21 November 2012, co-author A (also head of the research group) contacted the publisher and… - Case
HIV homeopathy
The authors carried out a study. A homeopathic treatment was given to people with HIV/AIDs. The outcome was quality of life, as measured by a questionnaire after 1 month and 18 months of treatment. Participants were selected for inclusion if they had a HIV seropositive status at the time of study and were not taking any other kind of HIV/AIDs treatment. The participants were stratified i… - Case
Retractions of primary literature papers: how should a review journal react?
In a recent and very prominent case of publication misconduct resulting in the retraction of 12 research papers (to date), many journals have been included in ‘round-mails’ from the whistleblower and other scientists. Our journal (a reviews and features journal) has published a review from the main author associated with the misconduct, which contains reference to six of the retracted papers. - Case
A case of salami slicing
A reviewer of our journal noticed similarity between a published paper (P1) and a manuscript under review (P2). At the same time, a member of the editorial team noticed similarity between another accepted manuscript for publication (P3) and both paper P1 and manuscript P2. All three papers were submitted by the same authors based on the same trial, reporting three different endpoints measuring… - Case
Possible omission of information essential for conclusions in a research paper
In 2013, our journal published a paper describing an observational study comparing two drugs (A and B) for the management of a chronic disease over a period of 10 years. The conclusion in the paper was that mortality was higher in group A (97 deaths) compared with the other group B (52 deaths) (hazard ratio 1.76, 1.22 to 2.53; P=0.003). This analysis was done after adjustment for a large number… - Case
Inability to contact an author to obtain permission to publish
Author A was an overseas PhD student who successfully completed the PhD, and then returned home to a country with considerable political and civil unrest. It had been intended to submit a paper before author A left but time ran out. Subsequently, authors B, C, D and E, who were all involved in the work in one form or another (experimental design, performing preliminary experiments, data interpr… - Forum discussion topics
COPE Forum: 13 November 2017: Self-Citation: where's the line?
A recent post on Scholarly Kitchen [1] raised some interesting points about the ethics surrounding citation, and specifically self-citation. Previously, COPE has discussed related issues surrounding self-citation by journals and editors [2] and citation of preprints [3]. During this forum, we broadened the discussion… - Case
Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy
The journal conducts double-anonymous reviews of all manuscripts submitted. As part of the decision process, reviewers routinely receive a copy of the decision letter, which includes reviewers’ comments. In the transition to a new editorial staff, a change to the email template inadvertently meant that the full letter was sent out, including the corresponding author’s name. Before this was disc… - Case
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
An article was submitted to our journal (journal A) in March. According to the journal’s working policy, the article was initially reviewed inhouse and comments were sent to the author. The authors replied to the comments but did not agree to the suggestion to convert the article to a short report. A rather impolite letter was sent by the author criticising the policies of the journal. We sent… - Case
Publishing complications and patient safety
Journal A is dedicated to communication about practical treatments related directly to patient and personal experiences. These ongoing discussions have been part of this specific medical profession for the past 50 years and journal A is a platform for these discussions. Regarding new treatments and new developments, permission from the local medical ethical commission is mandatory as wel… - Case
Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance
A journal recently handled a research paper related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper was deemed of interest and sent for external peer review. Because it accrued reasonably positive reviews it was scheduled for discussion at one of the weekly manuscript meetings where research editors and a statistician make final decisions on a number of papers. A few days before the meeting, it… - News
In the news: March 2018 Digest
…height: 28px; margin-top: 3px; margin-bottom: 3px; float: right;" />A US court has required a publisher to breach its confidentiality policy and identify an article's anonymous peer reviewers.http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/01/unusual… COPE 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- Case
Retrospective registration, outcome switching and ethical approval
…="https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policies/white-paper-on-publication-ethics/3-5-correcting-the-literature/">https://www.councilscienceeditors.org/resource-library/editorial-policie...). In general, the correction options are errata, corrigenda, expressions of concern, and retractions, although some of the wording is nuanced in ways that might be helpful in this situation. The editorial note referenced above seems to fall under the category of an Editorial Expression of… - 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 editorial: the challenge of AI chatbots for journal editors
…="http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/10jvv3q/eli5_what_exactly_is_text_burstiness_and_text/">where precise meaning is required eg in a legal sense) and burstiness (rare words appearing in a text) of the text. This might present an additional challenge for some authors using this software. Their writing may be detected and flagged up as… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Authorship for sale
…the paper mills webinar, 14:00pm - 15:30pm (BST / UTC +1) on Tuesday 20 September Useful links Systematic manipulation of the publication process, COPE guidance, updated 2022