- News
Case Discussion: Ethics of non-active management of a control group
…matters would have been germane. Given that the subjects of the research had the same systemic conditions, identification of the individuals would have been a relevant concern. As noted in Journals’ Best Practices for ensuring consent for publishing medical case… - Case
A commentary on a piece of (unethical) research
We have received a paper in which the authors have exposed a group of babies to physiologically unnatural circumstances. These circumstances do however arise quite regularly in some peoples’ lives. None of the babies had anything wrong with them, but some of them were siblings of babies who had died. Some of the babies showed physiological changes in the unnatural circumstances, which raised th… - News
Upcoming CrossRef webinars
…4:00 pm (London)Moderator: Rachael LammeyRegistration Introduction to CrossCheck In this webinar you will learn about the innovative plagiarism screening service and… - News
COPE at Sense about Science workshop. Peer review: the nuts and bolts
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines-new/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers">ethical issues. “Peer review is amazing” Sam Illingworth Sam Illingworth (Senior Lecturer in Science Communication, Manchester Metropolitan University) explained his own experiences of peer review, and although there are frustrations, peer review can be an amazing, positive experience helping researchers… - News
Case discussion: Low-risk study with no ethics committee approval
…publishing case reports (outlined in COPE’s Journals’ Best Practices for Ensuring Consent for Publishing Medical Case Reports). Trevor Lane on behalf of the COPE Education… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: November 2018
…China. Adrian Ziderman has been re-elected for a second term to COPE Council. We welcome them all as we move into the next year. Read November Digest: Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections COPE co-Chair - Case
The tortuous tale of a paper, a letter and an editorial
Dr A submitted an article to journal X that was published in 1996. Dr B wrote to the editor in January 1997, pointing out an error by Dr A. Shortly afterwards, Dr B submitted a longer editorial to the journal discussing the issue raised by this error in a much wider context. Dr B then withdrew the article and submitted it to journal Y at the end of March, with a covering letter in which he wrot… - News
Case discussion: Authors’ contributions and involvement by medical communications company
Case Summary Case 14-07 Authors' contributions and involvement by medical communications company An employee of a medical communications company contacted a journal’s editorial office. For several manuscripts, the employee had helped develop the… - Case
Disagreement between a reviewer and an author
We sent a paper to a reviewer, who suggested that we should reject the paper, principally because he thought it “virtually identical to a paper in press by the same authors”. We rejected the paper with these comments. The author came back to us saying that he did not believe that he had had a fair review of his paper because, he thought, the reviewer had a conflict of interest. He wrote: “The… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…href="https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/peer-review-terminology">standard peer review terminology to aid transparency and understanding of these differences. Others have started inviting specialist statistical review, or setting up ways of awarding credit to reviewers, for example, by publishing lists of reviewer… - Event
COPE webinar: managing paper mills
…integrity in higher education. Joris van Rossum STM's Director of Research Integrity The webinar is open to both COPE members and non-members. Registration has now closed Back to… Rights and permissions policy
…href="#photo">Photography and copyright Reproducing or translating COPE materials Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that you are free to copy…- News
Complaints and appeals
…upcoming COPE Forum and more. Read April 2018 Digest: Complaints and Appeals… - News
Post-publication discussions and corrections focus
…--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read November Digest: Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections. This issue of Digest announces new resources What to do if you Suspect Image Manipulation in a Published… - 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… - Case
Removing a retracted article from a third party site
…original article was published under a CC-BY license with the authors as the copyright holders. The article is available in full as a pdf on website Z. This is not one of journal A's indexing partners and we believe it may have been downloaded from journal A's website before retraction and uploaded to website Z. Numerous email takedown notices from the publisher to website Z have not been… - News
Case discussion: Possible breach of reviewer confidentiality
…href="http://publicationethics.org/guidance/Flowcharts?classification=2779">Peer review flowcharts, such as: What to consider when asked to peer review a manuscript - News
In the news: January 2021
…economics, medicine, physics and psychology were surveyed about various peer review issues. 49% reported checking all manuscripts for plagiarism, 61% allowed authors to recommend for or against specific reviewers, and fewer than 6% used a form of open peer review. 91% identified at least one circumstance in which it was acceptable for… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: January 2019
…height: 125px; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px; float: left;" /> Read January 2019 COPE Digest newsletter and use the COPE Audit Tool, read a case discussion on citation manipulation, get dates in the diary for COPE events in 2019, and keep… - Case
Author requests permission to publish review comments
…reviews and a commentary on the issues raised, prior to submission to a journal with open peer review. The author requested the journal’s consent for the review comments to be made public under CC licence. We declined permission to publish the reviews and explained that the journal operates a confidential single blind review process. Reviewers are informed that their names will not be revealed to…