- Case
Fraudulent data presented in a manuscript
…about the result (ie, 100% procedure success rate). One of the peer reviewers, reviewer X, who works with author A at the same institute in Europe, and who was also acknowledged in the author’s submission, provided further comment. In his letter to editor, he stated that “I have reviewed some of their manuscripts more than 10 times, and I have refused to be associated with their research, because… - Seminars and webinars
Inclusive language: policing or progressive?
…initial !important} /*-->*/ /*-->*/ Back to top Chaired by COPE Trustee… - News
Case Discussion: Possible plagiarism
…states: “Journals must allow debate post publication either on their site, through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer. They must have mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication”. Although COPE’s guidance is currently mostly geared towards scholarly journal publishing given the group’s history, COPE’s 10 Core Practices and… - News
Authorship and Contributorship focus: an editor view and research institution view
…://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars/copes-first-webinar-information-shared-discussion-and-practical-advice-common">COPE’s webinar on “Standards in Authorship.” Mark Hooper and colleagues from QUT shared several resources on authorship and publication. In addition, Siu-wai Leung, University of… - 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
Artificial intelligence: Lightning talk summary
…New tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing January 2024 Lightning talk In the first of our new Lightning Talks Marie Soulière and Nishchay Shah spoke about new tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing.… - News
Text recycling: Lightning talk summary
…these recommendations, see Moskovitz, A; Hansen, D, and Yelverton, M. Legalize Text Recycling. Learned Publishing, May 2023. Questions from the audience What impact do licensing arrangements have? Standard licences (such as Creative Commons) generally state the rights that anyone has to reuse the material as long as the original… - 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
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
Request to withdraw as an author of an accepted but unpublished paper
Last March we accepted a paper written by a post-doctoral fellow (PD) and an assistant professor (AP). The work was done by PD in AP's laboratory; PD has now moved on (to another country, in fact). Soon after the manuscript was sent to production, AP sent an email asking to delay production of the manuscript because AP was worried that there may be an ‘error’ in the manuscript that might requir… - 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
Case discussion: Possible breach of reviewer confidentiality
…review and publish signed reviews on public platforms (eg, those based on the F1000Research post-publication review model), peer review is usually a closed and confidential process. Confidentiality needs to be understood and maintained by both authors and reviewers. The manuscript under review, journal correspondence, and peer review reports… - News
Authorship, a blunt tool: "20 Jahre Research Integrity in Deutschland Was hat sich verändert? Wie geht es weiter?"
…enough tool for the job some people use it for: recognizing and rewarding research efforts. We explored the not-yet-widely-adopted contributorship model (where authors provide a short explanation of who contributed what), alongside narrative “soft” approaches to enabling this (like those used by The… - News
Complaints and appeals
…upcoming COPE Forum and more. Read April 2018 Digest: Complaints and Appeals… - Case
Removing a retracted article from a third party site
…individuals behind the website and their individual contact details, or to find the host site. Rocket reach can be useful for finding email addresses and telephone numbers. Another suggestion was to contact the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) to get help in removing the content from the third party website. Is there… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: March 2021
…the author worked together. COPE has established a working group to develop guidance on this important topic of author name changes. The group is now shaping guidance for journals and publishers that we will share with you in the coming months. May 10 is the date of our next webinar, on… - Case
Community leaders’ consent as a proxy for individual consent
A study was submitted that reported the prevalence of an intestinal infection in a tribal community. The authors did not obtain informed individual consent for stool collection from the study participants; instead they obtained consent from the leaders of each village. The study protocol was approved by the national IRB, but the protocol made no specific mention of stool collection—it referred… - Case
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
We have been contacted by a reviewer after he spotted a paper he had reviewed for us (journal 1) now published in a second journal (journal 2). Both journals are members of COPE. The reviewer had advised we reject the paper when it was sent to him to review in September 2008. This was based on his assessment of the paper and also the supplementary material he was sent by us: protocol, CONSORT s… - Case
Retract, correct, or both?
Like many journals, we do not collect actual signatures of each co-author, asking the corresponding author to declare on a form that, among other things, he/she has the authority to submit on behalf of the others A paper was published in our journal in April 2010. Shortly afterwards, we were contacted by one of the authors saying that he and his colleagues had been unaware of the existen…