Seminars
…Office for Research Ethics and Integrity at the University of Melbourne Download presentation [PDF 1MB] CrossMark: there is no final version — Geoffrey Bilder, CrossMark View presentation Poster: Legal…- News
In the news: August
…dichotomy, even if some countries accept that peer review has a place include cost and a desire to separate direct institutional funding decisions from research evaluations. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/01/16/why-has-no… - News
In the news: January Digest
…increase awareness within the linguistics community of the value of data citation. https://septentrio.uit.no/index.php/SCS/article/view/4876 (include image) The authors of this paper present a consensus-based checklist to improve and document the transparency of research reports in social and… - Forum discussion topics
Editing of reviewer comments
…appropriate to rescind or cancel comments by a reviewer if they are not constructive or if they are insulting, condescending and where there is be a conflict of interest. There is no value in sending comments that are insulting or unproductive to the authors. There should be a very clear difference between editing scientific comments and personal comments, specifically those that are outright… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…archiving and sharing. If there is no enforcement of a data sharing policy, and the infrastructure to support data sharing is lacking (it is currently patchy, although well developed in Australia, for example) and the editors do not have a policy of peer review of the data prior to acceptance of the paper, how will requiring data sharing actually improve the integrity of the research? Other questions…- News
Core Practices
…height:201px; margin:3px; width:750px" /> Why did we do this? The phrase “Code of Conduct” has been misinterpreted as being quasi legal. COPE is a membership organisation with no statutory or regulatory powers. COPE’s remit is to support and advise editors of scholarly journals and publishers/owners. The core practices include the core tenets of the Code of Conduct,… Membership subscription fees
…Reduced membership subscription fees Not-for-profit organisations, registered charities, journals from developing countries and cases of financial hardship may apply to COPE Council for reduced membership subscription fees. Notes Prices in UK Sterling, no VAT is charged for…- Case
Reviewer misconduct?
…authors’ work may simply be independent corroboration. At this time we do not feel a correction is warranted because we have no evidence of wrongdoing. Does COPE agree? • Are there other options that might be used in place of a correction?… - Case
Plagiarism of reviewer's work
…explanatory text, were copied and pasted (with translation into English but no attribution) from her unpublished PhD thesis, which was on this same topic;3) she had contacted the most senior authors about this, and they had apologised saying they hadn't realised that the first and most junior author, who had revised the submitted article, had lifted the cases from the reviewer's PhD thesis. They said… - Case
Ethical concerns and the validity of documentation supplied by the authors
The journal followed the advice given by COPE and sought legal advice from their publishers before writing to the hospital director raising their concerns. The editor also rejected the paper and gave the authors the reasons for doing this. The editor has had no response and so he plans to write again and also write directly to the head of the ethics committee. Update (September… - Case
Request by organisation to retract article and publish expression of concern
…editors of the journal are unsure how best to proceed with this request. They believe the article should not be retracted (no unethical misconduct was committed by the author as far as they are aware, and the article did go through peer review with two reviewers having minor corrections and recommending the editors publish the article, which they accepted), as the reasons stated in the letter for… - Case
Authorship dispute unsatisfactorily resolved by institution
Following advice from the COPE Forum, the journal approached the highest authority within the university to specifically confirm that the authorship of the paper was determined according to the criteria set by ICMJE/COPE, which they did. No further action was taken. The editor considers the case closed.… - Case
Editor manipulation of impact factor
…In general, the answer to all of the questions is no. Using the manuscript review process to increase citations of your journal is unethical, especially if the references are not germane to the paper. Sadly, this practice is common. A figure of 15% for journal self-citations is deemed acceptable by Clarivate Analytics. However, it is very difficult to know whether in this specific case the… - Case
Authorship issues from disbanded consortium
The journal received no further correspondence on this case from any party. The journal is willing to re-open/re-examine the issue if this happens, but otherwise they consider the case closed.… - Case
Author alleges discrimination by institutional report
…different versions of a heavily redacted report from the institution's responsible conduct of research investigation committee report. Because there was no response from the institution for several weeks, the journal published an expression of concern (EOC) and continued periodic chasing of the institution. The institution eventually responded indicating it was not an authorship conflict but… - Case
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
…this area are different. It would be advisable to follow the case up with the authors affected by the past cases, both as a courtesy, and also because they have been exposed to the risk of their articles being stolen. Since the journal does not know to whom the review materials were sent there would be no way to trace where else the articles could have ended up. The editorial team could… - Case
Suspicion that signed informed consent forms are forged
…Forum What course of action should we take? Do we simply accept the forms as being legitimate, knowing we have no ability or resources to investigate these matters? … - Forum discussion topics
Best practices for guest edited collections
…include lack of familiarity with processes (which can lead to the application of different standards), lack of clarity over roles and responsibilities; and a failure to communicate journal policies. Editors and journals should aim for there to be no ambiguity in these areas when working with guest editors. There are potential difficulties over information sharing with guest editors to ensure… - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…and the raw data may not seem obviously problematic when assessed in isolation on a case-by-case basis. There are difficulties in detecting use of ‘stock images’ as they have no obvious manipulations per se and data can be provided. The issue is only apparent across multiple published papers. Correspondence can be difficult because it is unclear if approaching… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2020: Understanding text recycling
…some of those we couldn't get to, after the webinar: 1. If a publisher requires you to sign a document that your submission is original and has not been published elsewhere, doesn't this require that any recycled text must be cited? Great question, with no clear answer. This is one of the major issues we are working on in developing our new model text recycling…