- 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… - News
In the news: August 2018 Digest
…="_blank">http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/07/26/open-science-is-all-very-well-but-how-do-you-make-it-fair-in-practice/ Research integrity British universities fail at research integrity self-regulationA report released July 11, 2018 noted that ¼ of UK Universities does not comply with the concordat to support research integrity released in 2012. This concordat tied loss of funding from agencies… - 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… - News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…Mattia Fosci and Rob Johnson suggests that academic reward and incentive cultures hamper efforts to create bridges between business and management researchers and society, and suggests that universities and business schools need to work more proactively to create a more inclusive and sustainable economy. - Case
Excessive self-citation in a book chapter
The case concerns an introductory chapter in a book. The publisher was first contacted about potential misconduct as part of a broader investigation into an academic who was a coauthor on an introductory chapter in a book. The publisher's subsequent investigation identified excessive self-citation in the work (one of the coauthors is named as an author on 12 out of 16 referenced works).… - 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… 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
Contacting Research Ethics Committees with concerns over studies
A paper was submitted, detailing a small overseas trial of a drug treatment of a politically controversial disease. The treatment was moderately toxic. The paper was seen by two referees (A and B), who had considerable criticisms of the methodology used. Comments were also received from C, who was invited to review but refused, because s/he did not want his/her name known to the authors under t… - Case
Possible plagiarism and fabrication
…drug B vs placebo, and drug A vs drug B comparisons, the p values for efficacy are identical in the two papers. 10. Both papers report an astonishing p<0. 000006 in favour of drug A compared with placebo for the difference in the incidence of vomiting. Both papers use Fisher’s exact test for analysing differences in the incidence. 11. Both papers report a p<0. 009 in favour of drug A compared… - Case
Duplicate publication and alleged image manipulation
The editorial office of journal A was contacted anonymously by an individual who made allegations against two papers, both published by the same author. Paper 1 was alleged to be a duplicate publication, with the paper previously having been published in journal B. The editorial office of journal A, in accordance with the COPE flowcharts, contacted the author informing them of the allegations a… - Case
Duplicate publication in possibly four papers
This case involves four manuscripts. Three of the manuscripts were originally published in another language and then published in our English language journal. There is overlap in the authors who were involved in all four manuscripts. The first and second manuscripts were duplicated publications from another journal. The evidence is very clear. The papers were published in another countr… - Case
Deceased author and author delaying publication
The journal accepted a manuscript for publication with two authors. One of the authors died before signing the copyright. This manuscript is now ready for galley proof approval from the surviving author. Proofs were sent to the surviving author and the author who died as normal because the production editor assigned to this manuscript did not know that one of the authors had died. After… - Case
Ukrainian authors request retraction of article in Russian conference proceedings
A journal has been contacted by a group of authors from Ukraine who wish to retract their article because of acute ethical issues in relation to the war with Russia. The authors are employees of a research institute in Ukraine. When preparing their article they were not fully informed about the country of the organisers of the conference. They are concerned that participation in a Russian confe… - News
In the news: September 2018 Digest
…communications? https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/08/28/all-about-open-annotation/ - News
Case discussion: repeated complaints about a review
…Case summary Case 11-07 A reader, whose identity was unclear, alerted a journal about an author who had recently been found guilty of publication misconduct and had had a dozen papers retracted. Subsequently, the reader repeatedly… - 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…