- Case
Undeclared author conflict of interest
A journal published a study related to a pilot programme run by an online mental health support resource which, at the time of publication, had a for-profit spinoff. At the time of the publication, this resource would share “anonymised” user data with the spinoff to create and market customer service software. Although this practice of sharing data has since been stopped, the authors of the man… - 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… Equal Opportunities Policy
…href="https://publicationethics.org/cope-policies">All COPE policies Page history First published: 31 December 2022 Back to top…- News
When the peer review process goes sideways
…COPE Education Subcommittee Read September 2019 Digest newsletter celebrating Peer Review Week. COPE Chair, Deborah Poff, reflects on the importance of peer review and support available for quality in peer review. We share COPE guidance on peer review and responses from AHSS editors on… - News
Letter from COPE: June 2020
…Porter, COPE Trustees Read COPE's June Digest for the latest cases discussed at the June COPE Forum and a summary of the Forum discussion on 'What does peer review mean in arts, humanities, and social sciences''. We also discuss the case 'low risk study with no… - 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… 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…Membership subscription fees
… 51 to 100 £4,248 26 to 50 £2,390 11 to 25 £1,328 5 to 10 £584 Continuous publications Publishing companies that wish to join COPE but do not have a discrete journal product published in intervals…- 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
Withdrawal of acceptance based on potentially unconsented data
…free of the use of the ethically inappropriate data. Given that the four letters were heavily based on the papers and cite data, figures, and equations, the decision was made not to publish the letters. The authors have complained that the journal has gone against COPE guidelines: "3.1 Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the… - 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… - 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,… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: taxonomy considerations
…href="https://www.crossref.org/people/geoffrey-bilder/">Geoffrey Bilder is Director of Technology and Research, Crossref. In 2012 Crossref launched an "update identification service" called "CrossMark". It was designed to allow publishers to easily disseminate correction/retraction information in a standard,…