- News
A research integrity issue: Who are you going to call?
…support staff and institutional counsel, to obtain information for all things related to research misconduct (www.ariohq.org). In the early days, even RIOs couldn’t find each other, which presented a unique challenge in trying to establish a RIO association. However, with lots of networking, digging through websites, and word of mouth, the… - News
COPE Members: update your details
…allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N12baYKLN_s" width="560"> Sign in* to the COPE website (Sign in: top right hand corner tab)You’ll see a list of the journals and the publisher you’re associated with*If you have forgotten your password, enter your… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
A paper on a controversial topic from three authors was published. All three authors completed forms to say that they did not have competing interests. This was stated at the end of the paper. A reader subsequently contacted the journal to say that she had clear evidence that one of the authors did have competing interests. He had, she said, been involved in legal cases and received substantial… - Event
COPE Forum
…unsatisfactorily resolved by institution (JM) 17-12 Potential figure manipulation with corresponding author uncontactable (JM) 17-13 Unhelpful institution report (SS) 17-14 Withdrawal request by an author (LS) 4. Updates 17-09 Lead author Forum agenda and materials - Case
Publication bias arising from an editor’s activities
…contrary viewpoints. Five of the 12 articles cited are by the commentator and/or the editor in question. Why has commentary on a particular field been monopolised over five years by a graduate student with little breadth of experience in the subject? Why have respected authorities been overlooked? Why has a particular viewpoint been allowed to dominate Journal X when contrary and broader views exist?… - Case
Attempted redundant publication
A group of authors submitted a paper to Journal A, but the editor noticed that it was very similar to a paper already published in Journal B. Neither paper made any mention of the other in the text, references, or the covering letter. The editor of Journal A sent a copy of the submission to the editor of Journal B who compared the two papers and decided there was substantial overlap. More worry… - Case
Duplicate publication
Journal A received a letter from a reader claiming that a figure in a paper published in the journal had appeared in various guises in three other learned publications over the course of 12 years. The origin of the figure was disputed and the reader believed the original source was not the authors. The authors of the paper in Journal A were asked to comment. They refuted the claim. The primary… - News
In the news: February Digest
…peer review processes have been documented as far back as ancient Rome such that all of us may have a lot in common with Cicero. https://blogs.plos.org/absolutely-maybe/2019/12/31/5-things-we-learned-about-peer-review-in-2019/ Nyssa Sibiger and Amber Stubler… - Event
ALPSP Webinar: Developing Ethical Commercial Revenues in a Changing Publishing Landscape
Tuesday 13 December 2016, online at 10:00 - 12:30 EDT (New York) / Resources and further reading
…3 August 2013Chris Graf, COPE Treasurer Beijing International Ethical Seminar of Medical Journal Editors, 1-2 June 2013. Suzanne Morris, COPE Ombudsperson Council of Science Editors (CSE) and the…- News
In the news: January Digest
…Predatory Publishing Leading scholars and publishers from ten countries have agreed a definition of predatory publishing. It took 12 hours of discussion, 18 questions and 3 rounds to reach. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03759-y Allegations of… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…have pointed out that there is often no clearly stated reason for retraction and when given these reasons are often lacking in detail. The difficulty with interpretation has never been quantified, however an absence of explanation was cited for 5–12% of retraction notices.[1]Following our study on retraction notices issued in 2008, we recommended the use of a retraction template.[2] This…- Event
COPE Forum: Monday 5 November 2018
…18-11 Increased number of casual submissions 18-12 A pre-submission inquiry with a bribe 18-13 Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing 18-14 Authorship conflict 18-15 Peer reviewer contacted by author 18-16 Data fabrication in a rejected manuscript 18-17 Possible plagiarism 18-18 Victim of article theft wants correction to list… - Event
COPE Forum: Monday 11 November 2019, 4pm (GMT)
…topic whether or not you are planning on joining the Forum. 3. New cases 19-12 Appropriate scope of review for retractions 19-13 Reproducibility of methodology 19-14 Removal of an author 19-15 Authorship dispute during review process 4. Updates on cases 19-09 Deceased author 19-08 Authorship issue related to misleading… - Case
Complaint regarding letters to the editor
Our journal routinely sends letters commenting on published articles to the authors of those articles. This gives the authors an opportunity to respond to any criticisms. The letters and the responses are then considered together and we make a decision on which ones to publish. If a letter is not selected for publication, our usual practice is to send the author's response to the person… - Case
Submitted paper already published elsewhere
Authors A submitted paper A to our journal in April 2012. One of the reviewers pointed out that a very similar paper, paper B, had already been published in another journal based in the authors' home country and covering a different field, in August 2012. Indeed, the title is almost the same, except for a few words switched around. We asked the authors to comment on this and were told th… - Case
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
The editor of journal 2 contacted the author of the paper who provided some, but not all, of the answers which he sought. So, after discussions with the reviewer and a member of the editorial board, they decided not to dig deeper with the author but instead publish the letters that had been sent to the journal about the paper. The editor of journal 2 published six letters in total: two… - Case
Data anonymity
…institutional review board who said it was exempt. The cohort was 2500 patients, all with one syndrome, in one hospital. The paper contains two tables that display data from 12 patients: sex, age, presenting symptom, as well as laboratory parameters and outcome. Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Are these patients identifiable?• If we remove, say, age and sex, would that be… - Case
The disappearing authors
Some time after a single authored research article was published a journal received a letter pointing out that the same article had been rejected by another journal because of unresolved authorship and acknowledgement issues. At that time the paper had 12 authors. The correspondent said that the single author had a patent application related to the topic of the paper. This was declared as… - Case
No control group, arbitrary dosage, undiagnosed condition
In summary, we have a case series, with no control group, of patients with different conditions treated for an undiagnosed underlying condition with an arbitrarily prescribed dosage of a drug which is not registered for treating any of the conditions nor the undiagnosed underlying condition. I rejected the paper for publication and let the author know that the ethics committee of the journal wi…