- Case
Potentially fake academic affiliation
…commercial companies, non-profit organisations, etc, from whence research may originate. The editor may wish to query the corresponding author in a non-threatening, open-ended way, and clarify addresses, contributions and any conflicts of interest. Creating something that might be fictitious or be a shell charity could raise concerns, particularly if there is no way to verify the associated affiliation.… COPE webinar: Understanding text recycling
…Information Policy Officer, Duke University Libraries David Hanson, formerly Faculty Research Librarian at UNC School of Law and Fellow at UC Berkeley Law Digital Library Copyright Project, has written and taught extensively on legal and ethical dimensions of copyright, publishing and access to information. He has contributed to briefs filed on behalf of libraries, academic…COPE webinar: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…supporting change. We welcome attendees from all backgrounds to participate in this and all our events, and we look forward to learning from the discussion. The webinar is free but is open to COPE members only.- Case
A lost author and a new hypothesis
…the group. A senior colleague in his home country felt the same way and eventually resigned from the collaboration. B was unaware that a paper was being prepared for publication from this study. The first time that he saw the paper was after publication. He only contacted the editor after several colleagues urged him to bring the matter out into the open. Not only was he not included as a full… - Forum discussion topics
What does peer review mean in the arts, humanities and social sciences?
…citation frequency. As noted by Mudditt and Wulf (2016) and Denbo (2020) in articles… - Forum discussion topics
Editorial conflicts of interest
…perceived as the primary tool to reduce this bias. Although most journals require that authors provide a publishable disclosure of COIs, a similar requirement for editors and editorial board members is lacking, and only a few journals openly disclose editors’ potential COIs on their websites.[2] This is despite COPE, ICMJE, the World Association of Medical Editors, the Council of… - Case
Ethical conduct of qualitative research studies
…populations. The need to submit to an Ethics board unnecessarily is costly and can be a real barrier to non-HCP led research (e.g. patient-led research) who do not have access. Question for COPE Council Does COPE have any existing (or new) advice on the need for ethics committee approval for this type of research? … Potential paper mills
…clearly labelled, which sometimes require specialist laboratory software to open. Managing this at scale is a significant challenge, and in many cases the trends only emerge when comparing with other potential paper mill submissions or published articles. By this time, many paper mill submissions might have been published, and at that stage we are alerted to the problem by “data sleuths” such as- Case
Fraud or sloppiness in a submitted manuscript
…screening, consent, inclusion, examination (4 days after the procedure), and analysis.] Here is the problem: the results are identical in manuscripts 1 and 2. In numerical form the results are only presented in tables (not in the main text and not in the abstract). In all three tables, the values are identical in both manuscripts. All three tables were submitted as one file, leaving open the… - Seminars and webinars
Post-publication critiques
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/handling-post-publication-critiques">Handling post-publication critiques COPE flowchart Addressing ethics complaints from people who submit multiple issues COPE discussion document Back to top … - News
Welcome new COPE members April-June 2019
…text-decoration:underline">https://publicationethics.org/members/3d-printing-medicine AAPS Open https://publicationethics.org/members/aaps-open Acta Geophysica https://publicationethics.org/members/acta-geophysica Acta Parasitologica - Case
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
…issue. The Forum were in agreement that the matter should be reported to the institution. The institution is the only body with access to the data and it is up to them to investigate. The journal is not in a position to do this. The editor should inform them of the analysis, but not the results. It would send a stronger message if the editors of the other journals were also to contact the… - Case
Scientific misconduct claim from a whistleblower where the institution will not investigate
…reproducibility due to poor methods descriptions and lack of access to all of the data. At this time the whistleblower sent an email recanting his/her original statement and saying they have assessed the work and the authors have made the appropriate changes to fix everything. This was an odd email as there had been no change in the manuscript since the resubmission. The editors ultimately decided… - News
Case Discussion: Editor and reviewers requiring authors to cite their own work
…you can make quick work to scan these lists to look for informative cases and decide if an individual case is helpful. Several cases may show up in more than one list, affirming the overlap of some Core Practices. Or you can browse for the type of resource you are interested in and once that is open, filter by the relevant Core Practice. Case discussion For our exemplar… - Case
Legal advice
We took legal advice. It was felt that the risk of publishing allegations which respected bodies had already found to be unsubstantiated was too high, laying us open to a claim for defamation from the people the allegations were made about. We rejected the manuscript, stating that the decision had been made after taking legal advice. - Case
The judgement of Solomon: a case of two strikingly similar papers
…evidence. We therefore felt that the only course of action open to us was to level the playing field, since to do otherwise would be to rule in favour of one or other group. Accordingly, we wrote to both groups of authors and told them that: (a) In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we had no choice but to assume that both papers… - Case
Dispute arising from peer review of a rejected comment and published correction
…that they had been privy to only via their involvement in the peer review of the comment, and that this fact had not been acknowledged in the correction. Group B requested the journal withdraw the correction and re-open the peer review of the comment. As the journal’s management team considered that the first request would leave an error in the scientific record uncorrected and the second… - Case
Institution refuses to investigate scientific issues
…case was provided and the similarities in the bands using an open source tool were highlighted. When the publisher received a copy of the investigatory committee’s report, it was clear that the institution had focused on the use of the software tool exclusively. The institution concluded that the software was not a validated tool, and so there was no basis for concluding that the blots in… COPE team
…evaluation of the usage and reach of open data. Linda Gough Administrator for universities and research institutes Linda has worked with COPE since 2006, in a previous role as COPE Administrator. This new role is dedicated…