- Case
Signing on behalf of other authors
The editors received a manuscript from a Far Eastern country ready to accept. The senior author (who has spent a lot of time in the West) was in the US when the editors asked for final signatures to be sent. The senior author instructed his team to collect and fax signatures while he was away and this was sent to the editors. When the signatures were examined by the editors, it appeared… - Case
Change of author affiliation
The Journal received an article for possible publication with three coauthors listed. The article was initially reviewed and accepted by the editorial committee. Then it was processed under double-anonymous peer review policy. Minor changes were requested which the authors implemented, and the article was accepted for publication. Before final printing, one of the authors (third author, previou… - Case
Parental consent for participants
As editor of a psychology journal, I received a manuscript from a group of scholars. The authors describe a qualitative online study with adolescent girls, aged 15–18 years, who met in person with a stranger they first ‘met’ online. The girls describe their reasoning about the risks, the safety measures they used and reactions to discomfort they experienced in the meetings. The authors… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…‘Preprints’ discussion document that sets out some of the benefits and challenges associated with the posting of preprints. We have received valuable feedback since posting the discussion document and we’d very much welcome your thoughts and feedback as we discuss the key issues further: • What are the…- Case
Self-plagiarism?
A paper was published with four authors from two universities and the contact author provided an exclusive license form on behalf of all of the authors. After publication, one of the authors contacted the editor claiming a case of plagiarism. The claim is that the published paper was a direct copy of an MSc thesis which this person had supervised 7 years previously. Complications arise in that… - Discussion documents
Preprints
…href="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/u7140/COPE_Preprints_Mar18.pdf" target="_blank">Discussion document on Preprints PDF 588 KB Key points Preprints are a form of publication which enable pre-peer reviewed articles to be disseminated… - Case
Late addition of new author to article
Journal A was contacted by the sole author of an article that had been peer reviewed and accepted requesting the addition of a second author. The original author claimed that he had forgotten to include the co-author earlier. The journal is concerned about the risk that the new author has not done any work on the article and might get undue credit if their name was added. Questions f… - Case
A pre-submission inquiry with a bribe
We recently received a pre-submission inquiry from an author, who identified as being fairly inexperienced with writing papers. At first glance it was a fairly standard pre-submission inquiry. The author mentioned the titles of two papers they allegedly had wrote and wondered whether we might be potentially interested in them. The author added that they had a colleague who would also be potenti… - News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…to manage. The five most common problems include: claims of stolen data, methods, or intellectual content (31%); incomplete, inconclusive, or suspicious institutional investigations (18%); undeclared conflicts of interest (18%); misconduct in conducting, analysing, or reporting findings (19%); and duplicate publication or salami slicing (14%). Specific author behaviours leading to disputes… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…personal and research data from the world’s academic institutions.” Andrew Pitts https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/09/18/guest-post-think-sci-hub-is-just-downloading-pdfs-think-again/ Academic Misconduct If errors… - Case
Publication of post-doctoral work
In 2012, Dr X started her post-doctoral training under a fellowship. She worked on the project until 2014, when the fellowship ended. She did all the work herself, and gave two seminars showing her results and progress, with positive feedback. When needed, she consulted with the supervisor or with a senior scientist in the laboratory (who has since resigned). By the time she finished, she had w… - Case
Increased number of casual submissions
We have experienced a sudden spurt in casual submissions of poor quality articles. We believe this is because authors wish to show that they have submitted articles which are under consideration at reputable journals. While any journal or editor would be happy to see increased numbers of submissions, sadly, most are of very poor quality in all respects. Most are very casually prepared wi… - Case
Victim of article theft wants correction to list their name, not retraction
Author A contacted us claiming that an article published in the journal recently by author B was stolen from an article author A had earlier submitted to two different publishers, publisher A in 2016 and publisher B in 2017. Author A provided the PDFs of the manuscripts they had submitted to those other publishers. The version submitted to us 2018 by author B was very similar to that submitted… - Case
Conflict between two authors
An article was published in a journal. Seven months later an email was received from an author declaring that he was invited by the lead author of the article to help with statistical analysis and had made significant contributions to the paper. To his surprise, he realised that the article was published and he was not listed as a coauthor. The editor asked the complaining author… - Case
Authors referring readers to an objectionable version of an article on a preprint site
Journal A accepted a commentary for publication. In the acceptance letter and communications with the authors, the editor requested the authors remove portions of their commentary that contained derogatory comments about individuals and the journal that were deemed inappropriate for discourse in a scholarly publication. The authors agreed to do so. Prior to sending the final version of their co… - 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… - Case
Is it a breach of confidentiality to send letters to the editor to criticised authors for comment?
(presented by Liz Wager on behalf of an author) (NB: COPE doesn’t normally discuss cases from non-members but as this raised some interesting general points, we thought it would be interesting to hear Forum’s views) According to the COPE guidelines, editors should “ensure the quality of published material… publish cogent criticisms from readers… [and] ensu… - Case
Duplicate submission
An author anxious about a competing paper contacted journals A and B (and perhaps others) about possible fast-track consideration of his study. Journal A said it would be as fast as possible; journal B actually had the competing study under consideration so agreed to look at this study very fast. The author submitted to journal B, the article was refereed in less than a week, and journal B offe… - Case
Are copyrighted conference audiotapes considered "prior publication"?
An editor received a query from an author: “Your guidelines are clear that presenting data at a society meeting does not preclude publication. But what if the society records the presentation, retains copyright of that recording, and posts it online? Is asking presenters to turn over copyright of a recording of data presented at a prepublication stage and disseminating the recording as they see… - Case
Controversy surrounding ethics approval
Journal A received a submission in which the authors conducted a field experiment. The authors noted that at the time of the experiment, ethics procedures were being developed at the authors' institution (institution A) and as a consequence of this, different departments within institution A had their own ethics procedures in place. The authors noted that they followed the procedures of their d…