- News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2022
Welcome to our annual edition of Digest celebrating Peer Review Week (19-23 September). This year’s theme is “Research Integrity: Creating and supporting trust in research”. As part of Peer Review Week, COPE is hosting a webinar on managing paper… - Case
Plagiarism in a review article
A review article was spontaneously submitted and sent out to three peer reviewers, which is standard practice for the journal. One of these reviewers expressed “serious concerns” about the paper. In a telephone conversation, s/he explained that the structure (headings, subheadings, etc), large “chunks of the text,” and most of the references had been plagiarised from a teaching syllabus that s/… - Case
How to correct a published paper
A paper was published in July 2012. The author was told by their institution that one of the figures had to be replaced, in the interests of national security. Failure to do this would result in imprisonment. The editor checked with one of his reviewers who said that replacing the figure will not affect the results or conclusions of the paper. So, can we replace the published version dir… - Case
Can a published journal article be submitted to conferences?
An article is submitted to a journal and accepted for future publication. The authors receive the acceptance letter and the script is waiting for the final publication process (within 4-6 months). During this time the authors ask the journal if they can present the full text of the article at a conference (which is going to be held before the publication by the journal). They also declar… - Case
Submission of article by ghost author
A corresponding author and two coauthors submitted a paper to our journal. The article was published after due process of reviewing etc. After publishing the paper, a student contacted us to say that the paper was totally derived from their Master's thesis. The journal's Research Ethics Committee heard the case and it was confirmed that the paper had been extracted from the thesis. All the auth… - Case
Possible image manipulation
A whistleblower posted on PubPeer regarding some apparently overlapping images in an article published several years earlier. To the research integrity team there appeared similarities, enough to warrant a request for the original images / raw data from the authors. The authors said they no longer had access to the original data and have denied any editing was made to the images. We commissione… - Seminars and webinars
Caste and publishing: an ethics gap?
…class="resource-download-inline__shadow__inner"> Further reading Countering helicopter research with equitable partnerships The Lancet Helicopter research and ethics dumping Nature Related COPE… - Case
Request for retraction due to alleged ethical misconduct in a grant application
A journal received a request from University A for a published paper to be retracted, citing ethical issues with the grant application submitted by an author from University B. The journal is satisfied that the rigorous editorial processes required by the journal were followed prior to publication and asked for specific details of the ethical breach; evidence that all authors on the publication… - Case
Potential image integrity flags on 15-year-old published papers
What should a journal do if an old (more than 15 years old) published paper is flagged on PubPeer for image concerns, but the case cannot be resolved due to the time lapsed? For example, if only low quality images are available online that cannot be analysed conclusively; some of the key authors may no longer be contactable; the raw data is no longer available; an institutional investigation is… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: March 2021
…currently engaged in the retraction taxonomy aspect of the project. RISRS is seeking feedback on its recommendations for reducing the inadvertent citation of retracted citation. Tuesday 23 March is COPE’s next Forum. The topic for this forum is “ - Case
A(uthor) vs C(omplainant) authorship dispute
A was a researcher in C’s lab for 1 year, during which time they published a joint research paper in a third party journal (journal S). After leaving C’s institute (henceforth called institute X), A published in the journal (journal T as a sole author). The affiliation provided by A on the paper was institute X. All of the data reported in this paper were obtained while A was still employed at… - Seminars and webinars
Publication misconduct tools
…part of 'publication misconduct and fraud day'" class="media-element file-full" data-delta="2" src="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/styles/full_content_width/public/seminar23-webpage-misconduct-tools.jpg?itok=QoQyDdDF" width="1200" height="500" /> COPE does not endorse any particular tools but supports all efforts to maintain the integrity of the… - Event
Publication Integrity Week 2023
Taking place over a week, Publication Integrity Week included a variety of sessions, with speakers invited to share their experiences. Videos or written summaries of the sessions are available now. Links to each session are below. #C0PE2023 Webinar recordings and… - Case
Request for removal from author list for reasons of religious belief
We have been contacted by an author of a published article who has requested to be removed from the author list. The author is third in the author list and is neither a lead author nor a corresponding author. The CRediT statement for the article reports that the author’s contribution to the work included investigation, validation, formal analysis and data curation. The author says that t… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: May 2019
…Council of Science Editors meeting. We will be at the ISMTE conference at the beginning of August in Durham and I look forward to seeing some of you there. Mark your calendars for September 23, 2019 for our - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2019
…reviewers in her blog post When the Peer Review Process Goes Sideways We are looking forward to seeing colleagues at our European Seminar on 23 September in Leiden, Netherlands where we'll be discussing text recycling, predatory publishing,… - News
In the news: July & August 2022
…="https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2022/07/07/announcing-peer-review-week-2022-an-interview-with-the-co-chairs/">Peer Review Week 2022 (Sept 19-23, 2022) is Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research Research integrity Dilemma Games, an app that makes a game out of resolving research-integrity dilemmas, aims to get researchers… - Case
Scientist reads published paper by former collaborators and claims co-authorship
The case concerns a paper we published, ahead of print, on the journal’s website on 5 October 2009. A week later we received a letter from Dr A who claimed that the authors had a major conflict of interest and implied that she should have been listed as an author. The paper we published is based on an idea which was tested in 2002 in Country P, and in 2004 in Countries Q and R. The authors of t… - Case
Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance
A journal recently handled a research paper related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper was deemed of interest and sent for external peer review. Because it accrued reasonably positive reviews it was scheduled for discussion at one of the weekly manuscript meetings where research editors and a statistician make final decisions on a number of papers. A few days before the meeting, it came… - Case
Should we allow pseudonymous authorship?
We are handling a manuscript that is now ready for acceptance. During the review process we noticed that one coauthor had the surname "999" and this coauthor and two others had the affiliation "Independent researcher". We asked the corresponding author what this meant. Their answer was that the names of two of these three authors, including "999", were pseudonyms. The paper was based on a compe…