- Case
Correction, retraction, or expression of concern?
Recently, we received a review report from PubMedCentral for the indexing application of one of our journals. Reviewers pointed out several shortcomings of particular articles below: 1. Discussions that did not thoroughly address limitations, and conclusions that were over-stated and/or not supported by the results. 2. Methods that were not described clearly and in sufficient… - Seminars and webinars
European Seminar 2019: Exploring Publication Ethics Issues in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
…globally and the quality of papers due to issues around language skills and access to literature. 2) Issues with detecting plagiarism and poor attribution standards was encountered by 58% of respondents. This was particularly prevalent among Business, Finance and Economics editors (79% of editors working in these fields). 3) 55% of respondents highlighted… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2022: Relationship between universities and publishers
…and Francis Group, Journals. After a research career in neuroscience, Sabina moved into scholarly publishing in 2008, working on open access journals as well as a variety of peer review and publishing models at BioMed Central journals and later at F1000 Research. Sabina joined Taylor and Francis Group in 2018, where she leads the publishing ethics and integrity team on providing expert advice and… Artificial intelligence (AI) in decision making: Forum discussion topic November 2019
…disagrees with a recommendation made by or action taken by AI tools? What types of procedures should be put into place to appeal an AI action? We welcome comments on this discussion from both members and non-members. Please add your comments below. The discussion will continue at the COPE Forum on Monday 11 November 2019, which is open to COPE members. Following this…Increasing number of fraudulent papers produced by “paper mills”
…multiple papers are compared, usually across different publishers, when the similarity of layout, figures, or images become obvious. Publishers need to be open and to collaborate to address this issue. A group of COPE member publishers give advice on what to do individually and collectively in this Publisher’s perspective:…- Event
COPE Forum: December 2022
…="https://publicationethics.org/case/temporary-exception-double-anonymous-review-policy">Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy 22-17 Open discussion Using guest editors for single article submissions 4. Updates to cases Members who have previously brought cases to the COPE Forum update us on their progress. 22-05 - Case
Provenance of a correction: undisclosed court case involvement
…its claims are backed up by the original study’s source data, currently embargoed by the author’s institution under a court confidentiality order. Conflict of interest seems open-and-shut. However, a further question seems to be: can/should anything be done before the drug company is able to supply the original source data to the editors? And what if the source data remain embargoed?… - Forum discussion topics
Best practices for guest edited collections
…review manipulation. Editors should be aware that people may impersonate other researchers or hack editorial software accounts of existing board members. Even where vetting is carried out it is still important to be vigilant about unusual behaviour that warrants further assessment, and conduct audits during later stages of review to detect patterns. Some indexing services are putting caps on… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: June 2022
…pressures which drive young researchers to paper mills as an easy solution was especially eye-opening. There was also an informative presentation of the problems faced by publishers by Suzanne Farley, Editorial Director at PLOS. Her presentation on the large number of potential paper mill submissions clearly articulated the fact that we have little idea of the scale of the problem. STM and COPE have… - Seminars and webinars
Handling a case of misconduct
…panel discussion" class="media-element file-full" data-delta="1" src="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width/public/seminar23-webpage-misconduct-panel.jpg?itok=DhN3NRqx" width="1200" height="500" /> Publisher’s perspective Coromoto Power-Febres (Research Integrity Manager, Emerald Publishing) opens the discussion with a call… Job vacancy: COPE content writer
…friendly and accessible - to increase our visibility on search engines - to keep HTML guidance pages consistent. Qualifications/experience required Minimum bachelor’s degree in English, journalism or related eld. Experience of publication ethics in scholarly journals, or writing for scholarly publications would be highly advantageous.United2Act launches action against paper mills
…world who collectively publish 66% of all journal articles and tens of thousands of monographs and reference works. As academic and professional publishers, learned societies, university presses, start-ups and established players we work together to serve society by developing standards and technology to ensure research is of high quality, trustworthy and easy to access.- News
In the news: April 2021
…href="https://www-bbc-co-uk.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-56462390" target="_blank">urged universities to block Sci-Hub on their networks due to the threat to the university of stealing research papers. By making the access to Sci-Hub illegal, the step is meant to prevent cyber security attacks on university networks as well. Sci-Hub contends that the website "removes all barriers" to science, and self describes a "pirate website". Particular vulnerability… - News
Guest editorial: Data availability statements
…sharing are often not upheld, even when the DAS indicates data can be accessed upon [reasonable] request. Part of the problem we have faced arises from the subjective interpretation of what qualifies as a "reasonable request" and who is authorized to provide or deny approval. In one example we had concerns about the validity of statistical methods employed in an article that said data would be… - Case
Meta-analysis: submission of unreliable findings
…their paper. Meanwhile the editorialist for the high profile journal has asked that his name be removed from the meta-analysis in our journal. The authors of the meta-analysis, one of whom was the lead author of the high profile journal report, had full access to the RCT data at the time they were preparing their revised paper for our journal. They knew that the main finding of the RCT… - News
Vacancies on COPE Council
…all of COPE’s material and expertise is available to other editors and publishers around the world, especially those in developing areas who don’t have the experience or access to resources that we had starting out. COPE Council is a small, diverse group of experts, passionate about ethics in research publication. It’s been a pleasure and a learning experience to be a part of that group, and… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical practice in research data publication - challenges, lessons and opportunities
…Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. Iratxe highlighted key themes in the drive towards research data sharing through funding mandates and journals own initiatives, supported by data availability statements, and recommendations from organisations such as ICMJE, which request data sharing plans be included in clinical trial registrations. She highlighted COPE’s contributions to… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…reviewing the literature? Preprints are typically not included in regular indexing services, so are less visible than journal articles and more likely to be overlooked by authors. Withdrawal/retraction and correction/updating preprints – Under what circumstances should a preprint be retracted or updated and whose responsibility is it to make such a decision, given that…- Discussion documents
Diversity and inclusivity
…knowledge. Shared characteristics between author and reviewer has an impact on peer review and publication outcomes. English language requirements of indexing databases may be catalysing and sustaining biased, discriminatory and disproportionate publication behaviours globally. Commitment to ethical principles of diversity, equity and inclusivity should include the development and… - Case
Plagiarism by a possible predatory journal
…have much impact on the predatory journal, which is clearly not concerned with behaving ethically. If the predatory journal is not indexed in the major databases such as SCOPUS and Medline it is unlikely to be easy to discover by readers, and so the current editors can hope that it will not receive undue attention. However, they should be mindful that it is still part of the published record…