- Case
The case of a physician in private practice offering an experimental intervention
…all patients went into remission. He did not compare this new therapy against any standard therapy. It is unclear from the physician’s letter to us whether the patients knew that this was an untested experimental treatment, or that they were essentially in a trial. The physician made no mention of whether he obtained informed consent from his patients. He made no mention of ethics committee… - Case
Complaint regarding letters to the editor
…complaint was not that the letter and response were not selected for publication, but that it was a violation of confidentiality to send the response to the writer of the letter. Our editorial executive committee thought it strange that the author had privacy concerns about one person seeing the response, but no concerns about the tens of thousands of people who would have seen it if it had been… - News
Case discussion: Low-risk study with no ethics committee approval
Case Summary Case 16-06 A submitted manuscript described an advocacy campaign in a lower-middle income country that used social media to promote an online petition supporting a proposed law. The authors… - News
COPE Competition!
Can you sum up COPE in a single phrase? We're looking for a new slogan for our homepage. Can you suggest something better than 'Helping journals to get their houses in order'? If we get lots of good suggestions we may ask members to vote on them. There's no prize except the chance to know your creative talents have contributed to our website! Click on the link below to submit your suggestion.… - Case
The single author, randomised controlled trial
…correspondent was also worried that there was no mention of other standard treatments. Advice was sought from a statistician and a gastroenterologist, both of whom raised serious doubts about the paper. The editor asked the chief executive of the hospital to investigate. Initially, the medical director of the hospital wrote to say that it would be impossible for them to investigate unless the journal was… - Case
The unacceptable use of a placebo
…receive the medication or an inert placebo. The randomisation was inadequate (“patients were consecutively enrolled in two groups”). The paper gave no details of ethical approval or informed consent. As patients had to stop taking NSAIDs, which were controlling their pain and other symptoms, is it ethical that half received an inert placebo?… - Translated resources
Cómo reconocer la potencial manipulación del proceso de revisión por pares
…Cómo reconocer la potencial manipulación del proceso de revisión por pares Los pares revisores pueden ser sugeridos por: El editor que gestiona el manuscrito. Autores al momento de presentar su manuscrito a la revista. Otro revisor quien no puede hacer la revisión por pares del manuscrito. Mientras existe la expectativa de que todos los… - Case
Possibly unethical report on the safety and efficacy of a minor operation
…four or five such procedures in a year in an average practice, but there were over 200 in the report. Paediatricians regard the procedure as unnecessary. All paediatric textbooks agree. Apparently, some paediatric surgeons overseas, parent support groups, and speech therapists are quite keen on it. There is no good evidence base on which to decide who is right. The concerns were: 1. As there was no… - Case
Potential redundant publication
A group of authors from the same specialty unit published a study in Journal A on all prehospital X procedures. They then sent another paper on X procedure in a subgroup of patients to Journal B. Paper B references paper A, but does not make it apparent that there is any overlap in these studies. On questioning by editor B, they stated that no patients in paper B were included in the previous… - Case
Accusation of theft of a model
…anything amounting to actual evidence of the alleged theft. Owing to the technical nature of some of the evidence, the journal informed the parties that the material would be sent to an anonymous expert for adjudication. The adjudicator concluded that no evidence had been provided that supported the accusation. The journal will therefore be continuing its usual editorial consideration of the article. The… - Case
Possible breach of confidentiality by a reviewer
…the Brain office. When contacted by our office, the reviewer confirmed that s/he did use some data previously presented by this group of authors but in no way used this figure and did credit the authors. The reviewer had deleted the slides of the talk when I asked for them. The authors claim that the figure presented by the reviewer was identical to that in their paper under review and could… - Case
Withdrawal of accepted manuscript from predatory journal
Our journal has been contacted by an author who would like to submit a review article. The author responded to a request for an invited review from a predatory journal without realizing it was a predatory journal. The author submitted the article only to receive an unexpected invoice and clear evidence of no peer review. The author investigated the journal and then realized the predatory… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…expression of concern if there is evidence that findings are unreliable but no investigation will be conducted? 9. What is the best name for this type of notice? Publisher’s note and editorial note are among the alternatives. References Correcting the Literature, CSE’s White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications, 2012 Update- Case
Randomised controlled trial without ethics committee approval
…technically more successful in one or other of the patient positions, and whether there was any patient preference. It is a clinically relevant question, and the study produced an apparently useful and meaningful result. The paper reported that the patients consented verbally to random assignment, but as the clinical reviewer pointed out, there was no mention of ethical approval. The authors were asked… - Translated resources
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (Portuguese)
…Aberto-OASPA) e a World Association of Medical Editors (Associação Mundial de Editores Médicos-WAME) são organizações acadêmicas que têm observado um aumento significativo no número e na qualidade das solicitações de adesão. Estas organizações, juntas, colaboraram para criar princípios de transparência e boas práticas para publicações acadêmicas e para tornar claro que esses… - Case
Potential figure manipulation with corresponding author uncontactable
…publication of the paper, and no current contact details could be found. No co-authors were able to confirm how the figure was constructed, but explained that it was an old image that was made by or for the corresponding author, and that the location of the raw image or original data was not known due to the corresponding author’s laboratory being dismantled on retirement. The figure is also present… - Translated resources
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (Spanish)
…Las organizaciones no compartirán listas de editores o revistas que no pudieron demostrar que cumplen los criterios de transparencia y mejores prácticas. Esta es la tercera versión de un trabajo en progreso (publicada en enero de 2018); la primera versión fue puesta a disposición por OASPA en diciembre de 2013 y una segunda versión en junio de 2015. Nosotros alentamos su amplia difusión… - Event
COPE Workshop: MUNIN Conference
…Practices and, for each, examples of challenging cases will be discussed interactively with participants. The workshop is free for COPE Members. Read more and register >… - Case
Suspected fabrication of data
…without this we could no longer consider the paper. The line went dead. What should we do next?… - Case
Redundant publication
A complaint of redundant publication was made by a reader, who claimed that a second paper had been published in the journal, after the first had already been published elsewhere. No permission letter was obtained by the author of the second paper and the first paper had not been cited.…