- Case
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
Regarding a submitted (but not yet accepted) paper from a scientific collaboration, one of the authors has asked whether an instance of academic misconduct or - for that matter - any non-scientific but rather unsavoury personal facts or accusations (e.g. a penal or civil proceedings) can be considered as a valid ground for requesting that the journal remove an author from the paper, as per the… - News
In the news: August
…well‐documented to be flawed, JCR should stop reporting it and replace it by the more appropriate median citations per article, median citations per review and median citations per other type of article, also excluding journal self‐citations." https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10… - News
In the news: January Digest
…examples of editorial review in ancient Rome, post-publication peer review involving in the fourth century, and pre-publication review in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. https://utpjournals.press/doi/full/10.3138/jsp.51.1.04 This paper presents a study of single blind versus double blind review in… Foreword, COPE Report 2005
…investigated COPE’s council thought it important to find out how close editors were to meeting these standards. Our survey of COPE members was not encouraging [url]. Almost two thirds of respondents had no declared policies on pursuing research misconduct when it is suspected; six out of 10 had no declared complaints procedure; half had no published guidance for authors; and…- News
COPE collaboration with FORCE11 Working Group
…href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/prometheus.36.2.0116?seq=1">research assessing data policies at journals across a number of disciplines. The authors looked at the information sharing policies of 150 journals and publishers from 15 disciplines to understand the levels of different data sharing policies in different fields. Our collaboration with the FORCE11 WG allows us to continue our work supporting editors and publishers in handling ethical considerations… - News
Diversifying editorial boards
…="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1077699020904169?_gl=1*ne2r3a*_ga*NTY0NjIzMjQ2LjE1MzQxNTI0MTY.*_ga_60R758KFDG*MTYyODI1ODUxMi4xNDIuMS4xNjI4MjU4NTE4LjA.*_ga_RK7MQ5ZZVZ*MTYyODI1ODUxMi44NC4xLjE2MjgyNTg1MTguMA..">Research shows that journals with diverse editorial boards are more likely to publish more diverse research articles – in terms of diversity of topics and diversity of authors. This in turn increases the breadth… - Case
Question of paper retraction due to proven fabricated data
A published paper has been under legal scrutiny due to fabricated data. The court has concluded that the evidence presented undermined the credibility of the study. We have read the COPE guidelines for retracting an article and have checked the flowchart 'What to do if you expect fabricated data'. From reading the guidelines it seems that the editor has the right to retract the paper and to do… - Case
Authorship order dispute
…You can listen to the podcast of this case from the menu on the right A manuscript has been accepted for publication in our journal and we would like to publish in the March 2011 issue. The corresponding author (Dr F) is trying to collect copyright forms from all of the authors of the paper to send back to us, but one author will not sign the copyright form due to a disagreement about… - Case
Author misconduct
…You can listen to the podcast of this case from the menu on the right The rector at author D’s institution contacted the editor of journal A stating that they have found what they evidently consider to be serious misconduct in an article written by author D and the rector requested author D to retract the paper from journal A but author D refused to do so. The institution contacted jou… - News
Standards in Authorship webinar summary
…to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers ICMJE: Defining the role of authors and contributors Beyond… - Case
Serial plagiarism by an experienced author
Suspicions were raised on 20 September 2012 by a reviewer who commented that some of the passages in a submission from Dr J were similar to an earlier paper published in our journal by the same author. An iThenticate check indicated a similarity index of 60%: however, the overlap was not from that earlier paper but from another source by a different author which had contributed 41% of the mater… - Case
Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article
An opinion piece on a polarising political and technological topic was published. A discussion ensued on social media, and shortly after, the publisher received a formal complaint stating that the editor-in-chief of the journal, who had managed the peer review process for the manuscript, had a conflict of interest and should not have made the final acceptance decision. When the publishing team… - Case
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: April 2019
…What we’ve learned: Reflections at the end of our term as COPE Co-Chairs Image credit: CC-BY-SA-3.0-migrated Jerry Segraves-jerrysfoto.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue-reflect.jpg We often reflect… - News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…Review The theme of Peer Review week, September 10-15, 2018, is “Diversity and Inclusion in Peer review. The announcement about the week and ways to participate is at https://peerreviewweek.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/prw-press-release1.pdf Deborah Sweet published a blog bost on CROSSTALK… - News
Case discussion: gift authorship
…href="https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(20)30591-6/fulltext#">Sengül Gülen et al (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2020) found were positively associated with gift authorship in collaborative work. In that survey of 666 first-authors of Cochrane reviews published between October 2016 and December 2018, 41% of authors reported the existence of gift authorship in their reviews and 15% were… - News
Guest article: Self-plagiarism in philosophy
…target="_blank">differing outlooks about what constitutes inappropriate textual reuse across fields, there is general agreement that in its more extreme forms, self-plagiarism generates three major problems. Each of these problems creates inefficiencies in both the production of knowledge and its transmission. First, self-plagiarism generates an… - Case
How to correct an incorrect decision to publish a flawed paper
The Forum suggested issuing a notice of correction but the editor should perhaps consult with the publisher’s legal department before publication. As the problem occurred nearly 10 years ago, another suggestion was to write an accompanying editorial explaining the whole case. The journal can issue a notice of correction without the approval or consent of the authors, but the advice was to… - Case
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
…journal, there were 10 authors. During the review process, two authors were removed from the article at their request. This happened in May, between manuscript resubmission. These two authors then submitted the case report to journal Y, with a new set of co-authors. We have confirmed with the Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of journal Y that they received their initial submission in May. As noted,…