- Case
Authorship dispute
An article was published with three authors’ names. Not all of the authors’ signatures had been included on the original submission letter. A complaint was lodged by Y, who said that X had submitted the paper without either his or Z’s consent or knowledge, and that there were several specific errors and omissions. Y then submitted a statement for publication in the journal dissociating himself… - Event
6th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI), Hong Kong, 2019
…Research Board, Ireland, Dublin Ginny Barbour, Australasian Open Access Strategy Group, Brisbane Margie Jantti, Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL), Wollongong Frederick Leung, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 13:30 – 15:00 Plenary G Predatory publishing and other challenges of new models to share knowledge (Grand Hall) Chair: Susan… How COPE will respond to a media enquiry
…COPE’s 10 Core Practices, which includes resources such as guidelines, flowcharts and real publication ethics cases, covers many ethical issues to help editors in their day to day work. COPE was established in 1997 by a small group of journal editors and now has over 13,000 members worldwide from all academic fields. COPE is a global organisation with Trustees and Council Members…- Event
COPE Forum: December 2022
…cases Cases submitted by COPE members for discussion at the Forum. 22-13 Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal 22-14 - Case
Short case reports without formal consent
A manuscript was submitted about prenatal diagnosis of a specific cardiac disease. Short case reports of four babies who died were included. Although there are no names, we believe that there are sufficient details about the particular baby being described to be identified by the parents and by those involved in their care. The authors argue that: “As these deaths occurred over 13 years… - Case
Retraction update?
I'm seeking advice on how my journal should publish an update to an author requested retraction. In a past issue, our editorial team accepted an author requested retraction; the authors cited errors in data reported in various figures. We have since learned of other errors in the paper and its figures, and we would like to now publish an update that provides more detailed and specific informati… - Case
Reproducibility of methodology
A whistle blower contacted journal A regarding two published articles. The articles focus on the effect of energy healing on an in-vitro model of disease. The whistle blower raised concerns about the appropriateness and reproducibility of the energy healing methodology used. The authors were contacted to provide an explanation of the methodology as there was a lack of clarity in… - Case
Author requesting removal of verbatim text from published paper
Author A contacted author B. Author B had published a paper several years ago that contained verbatim text of author A’s previously published work. The verbatim work was cited but presented to the readers as paraphrased from the original. Similarity checking software showed that the paraphrased text was too close to the original text; in fact, it was quoted verbatim. Author A is demandin… Self-Citation - Forum discussion November 2017
…editors/reviewers? This will be discussed at the next COPE Forum on Monday 13 November 2017. Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member of register as…Publication and research ethics related to geopolitical issues
…="https://www.alpsp.org/News/alpsp-statement-support-for-ukraine-march-2022#:~:text=The%20Association%20of%20Learned%20and,solidarity%20with%20the%20Ukrainian%20people.">ALPSP statement of Support for the Ukrainian People, 4 March 2022 STM statement: STM statement of support for the people of Ukraine Page last updated 13…- Case
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
An associate editor handling a paper for this journal reported to the editor-in-chief that he had not yet been able to recruit a single reviewer—all those who have been contacted had declined or not responded. The paper is in scope for the journal, it seems of reasonably quality from a brief read and the associate editor is appropriate; but this is a small and specialised field, and finding exp… - Case
Unhelpful institution report
An allegation of data fraud was not satisfactorily resolved by correspondence with the authors. We then went to the lead institution and asked for an investigation. Within 10 days we had a report clearing the authors, but interestingly using some of the exact same phrases the authors used in their responses to us. We felt that the report was too superficial and approached the other institution… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…editors/reviewers? The Forum is open to COPE members who need to register by Friday 10 November. Comments on this discussion are open to all below: This will be discussed at the next COPE Forum on Monday 13 November 2017. Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the…History and context of the COPE guidelines
…Guidelines on Good Publication Practice in 1999 COPE's first guidelines were developed by Philip Fulford, Michael Doherty, Jane Smith, Richard Smith, Fiona Godlee, Peter Wilmshurst, Richard Horton and Michael Farthing, after discussion at the COPE meeting in April 1999. These were published as Guidelines on Good Publication…- Discussion documents
Citation manipulation
…2019 Citations: link, locate, discover, connect Guest article, August 2018 Self-citation: where's the line? Forum discussion, November 2017 Your feedback COPE… - Case
How to handle offers of promotion of authorship for sale
We have been approached via email by a company promoting authorship for sale. The email describes the service as providing 'co-authorship' of an existing article that has been submitted for publication in an indexed journal. The articles cover a range of disciplines and the company claims a high success rate for publication. Question for COPE Council: What steps sho… - Case
Institutionalised policy of gift authorship?
A manuscript was submitted to our journal. After review we asked for revision. At this time we sent a formatting checklist which includes criteria for authorship. Two authors were removed in the resubmission. Eventually the manuscript was published. At this time one of the formerly included authors contacted us, asking why they were no longer cited. We asked the submitting author, who ex… - Event
COPE Lightning Talk: Text recycling in research writing
17 April 2024, 13:00-14:00 BST / UTC+1 COPE Members only Clarifying the legalities for authors and editors Over the past six years, the Text Recycling Research Project has conducted empirical studies to better understand text recycling in the research context and used what they’ve learned to develop… - Case
Inappropriate authorship on students paper
A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study which was a final year student's project was submitted as an original article to our journal on 30 April 2011. On initial review it was obvious that it was conducted by students and written by them, but the list of authors had the supervisor as the first author, followed by 13 students. The supervisor, who was also the corresponding author,… - Case
Order of authors changing between a submitted manuscript and a published paper
A paper was submitted to an online journal with the order of authors A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. After review, the manuscript was accepted for publication, subject to the authors making some minor changes. While making the formatting changes, the submitting author changed the order of the authors to B, A, C, D, E, F, G. This change was not noticed by the editors and the manuscript was published on…