- 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 s… - Case
Ethical approval and parental consent
A journal received a paper from a single author, attributed to a UK institution, in which 10 children were operated on using two techniques, each child having one technique to one side and one to the other side, at the same operation. The paper went to review, and neither reviewer spotted that this was a prospective surgical study on children, with no mention of consent or ethical… - Case
Lack of patient consent for a case report, patient confidentiality
A case report was submitted to journal X reporting on a child who had been admitted to hospital suffering an injury, which the doctors suspected resulted from a deliberate cigarette burn. This was not proved until the child returned to hospital with other non-accidental injuries, and following a full criminal investigation the child’s parents were convicted of child abuse. Patient consen… - Case
Authorship dispute
Professor X claims that he should have been a coauthor on one of two peer reviewed publications and the senior author on the other. The situation is unusual in that Professor X is now retired and his name was omitted from coauthorship of both papers. Professor X argues that he should have been the senior author of the first manuscript since the funds to initiate the project were directly derive… - Case
More than a breach of confidentiality?
A journal received two manuscripts on the same topic in short succession.Manuscript A was rejected after peer review; manuscript B, submitted a few months later, was accepted after peer review. When manuscript B was published, author X contacted the journal to express concern about similarities between both papers and the fact that the first had been rejected and the second accepted. The… - Case
Fraudulent data presented in a manuscript
…about the result (ie, 100% procedure success rate). One of the peer reviewers, reviewer X, who works with author A at the same institute in Europe, and who was also acknowledged in the author’s submission, provided further comment. In his letter to editor, he stated that “I have reviewed some of their manuscripts more than 10 times, and I have refused to be associated with their research, because… COPE Forum
…peer review, editing of reviewer comments Predatory publishing Ethical considerations around book publishing- Seminars and webinars
Inclusive language: policing or progressive?
…initial !important} /*-->*/ /*-->*/ Back to top Chaired by COPE Trustee… - News
Case Discussion: Possible plagiarism
…states: “Journals must allow debate post publication either on their site, through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer. They must have mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication”. Although COPE’s guidance is currently mostly geared towards scholarly journal publishing given the group’s history, COPE’s 10 Core Practices and… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2020
…Trust in peer review September sees the sixth Peer Review Week taking place (21 - 25 September), which has now become something of an established fixture in the research community calendar. The theme for this year is ‘trust’; a focus which resonates strongly with the core values and goals of COPE, going hand in hand with ethical reliability and responsible leadership. COPE’s… - Case
Salami slicing/duplicate publication
An article with four authors was published in journal A. The same article with a slight change in the title and one additional author, was published three months later in journal B. The authors had submitted the article to both journals at the same time. The number of study subjects in the two articles were the same, with a very slight difference in the wordings of the objective o… - Case
Author alleges discrimination by institutional report
In 2020, the corresponding author of an article published online three years previously notified the journal of an authorship conflict and explained that the institution was requesting retraction. Because authorship conflict does not typically warrant retraction, the publisher requested further details from the author and the author's institution about the conflict. The author provided two diff… - News
Artificial intelligence: Lightning talk summary
…New tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing January 2024 Lightning talk In the first of our new Lightning Talks Marie Soulière and Nishchay Shah spoke about new tools and directions in AI for scholarly publishing.… - News
Text recycling: Lightning talk summary
…these recommendations, see Moskovitz, A; Hansen, D, and Yelverton, M. Legalize Text Recycling. Learned Publishing, May 2023. Questions from the audience What impact do licensing arrangements have? Standard licences (such as Creative Commons) generally state the rights that anyone has to reuse the material as long as the original… - Case
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
A paper submitted to a journal with a single anonymous peer review policy was assigned to a prospective reviewer, who agreed to undertake the review. The reviewer then sent an email addressed to a number of different research group and institutional mailing lists calling for volunteers to review the paper. The reviewer attached the PDF of the paper, which had been downloaded from the submission… - Case
Academic freedom
A final year student, and two other researchers in law, all from the same university, undertook research into a recent court judgment on the rules in relation to civil servants making public comments. Based on this research, a manuscript was drafted to be submitted to a double anonymised peer reviewed journal. The manuscript is highly critical of the judgment’s reasoning and impact. All three a… Press
…transparency and best practice released 15 September 2022 The fourth edition of the Principles represents a collective effort between the four organisations to align the principles with today’s scholarly publishing landscape. Guidance is provided on the information that should be made available on websites, peer review, access, author fees and publication ethics. The…- News
Case discussion: Possible breach of reviewer confidentiality
…review and publish signed reviews on public platforms (eg, those based on the F1000Research post-publication review model), peer review is usually a closed and confidential process. Confidentiality needs to be understood and maintained by both authors and reviewers. The manuscript under review, journal correspondence, and peer review reports… - News
Case Discussion: Lack of trial registration leads to new concerns about study conduct and ethical review/approval
…="https://publicationethics.org/files/General_Approach_To_Publication_Ethics_For_Editorial_Office.pdf" style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">General Approach to Publication Ethics for the Editorial Office”. Offices of non-COPE journals can align their policies and procedures with the 10 COPE Core Practices and link to COPE resources (but not reproduce or copy them or misuse the COPE logo). They… - News
Authorship, a blunt tool: "20 Jahre Research Integrity in Deutschland Was hat sich verändert? Wie geht es weiter?"
…enough tool for the job some people use it for: recognizing and rewarding research efforts. We explored the not-yet-widely-adopted contributorship model (where authors provide a short explanation of who contributed what), alongside narrative “soft” approaches to enabling this (like those used by The…