- Case
Legal advice
…authority. The committee commented that what ever the editor does, they will be in trouble and added to the authors list! It was pointed out that the complaint had been taken to the highest level in the country and it is difficult to see why the editor should join in the debate and there was speculation if the material should be published. It sounded like the author wants all those involved with their… - Case
Repetitive duplicate submission to multiple journals and redundant publication
…submitted to J8, J2, and J7. J2 contacted J8 about possible duplicate submission. J8 rejected MsD based on reviewer reports and also added a note to the author informing them that there had been a report of possible duplicate submission with their Ms. The abstract of MsD has been found to be identical to the abstract of an article published in June 2005 in J10 with the exception of two… - Case
Breach of peer review confidentiality
…longer presented in such terms, in the revised manuscript. That observation further added to the author's and editor's concern that the revised manuscript had not been judged properly, or even at all, by reviewer B, and that the process of peer review had been compromised in several ways. An inevitable conclusion is that the peer review of this manuscript was compromised in respect of the… - Case
Managing an editor’s undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article
…basis of any professional or personal opinion the reviewer or editor may hold. Any revisions that result from post-publication peer review will be added to the published article as an erratum along with a disclosure of the editor-in-chief’s conflict of interest. As an alternative to post-publication peer review, should the publisher issue a statement attached to the article confirming the… - Case
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
…Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee for further inquiry. Finally, Journal B could consider adding an editorial statement to the article noting that the prior publication in Journal A is redundant and it is the version in Journal B which is the true record.… Membership subscription fees
…year 3751 to 4000 £65,838 3501 to 3750 £63,715 3251 to 3500 £61,325 3001 to 3250 £58,671 2751 to 3000 £55,751 2501 to 2750 £52,565 2251 to 2500 £49,114 2001 to 2250…- News
In the news: December 2020
…the phenomenon of "vanished journals "- open access journals that disappear - Mikaek Laakso and co-authors consulted several major bibliographic indices and found 176 open access journals that vanished from the web between 2000-2019 from all major research disciplines and world regions. This highlights concerns about the integrity of the scholarly… Code of conduct for COPE meetings and events
…meeting link for web-based events or unauthorized copying, distribution, or alteration of COPE's proprietary content, or other misuse of COPE member resources. Sharing of third party content, e.g. presentations by non-COPE members, material that we have used (with permission) but do not have permission to share with third parties, etc. Retaliation against anyone reporting prohibited…- Case
Who ensures the integrity of the editor?
…publishing in a major journal and on web sites to encourage discussion.… - News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…Summary of Responsible authorship panel at WCRI2019 Our session on the first day of the conference was a panel discussion describing the preliminary analysis of 134 authorship cases presented to the COPE Forum between 1997 and 2018, followed by… - News
In the news: May & June 2022
…edited by COPE Trustees Deborah Kahn and Nancy Chescheir Page history Page last updated: 20 June 2022 … - Case
Institution wants to retract despite ongoing legal proceedings
The case has been with two publishers for more than a year. Journal A at publisher A published article A by author A, affiliated to institution A and institution B (in another country), and author B affiliated to institution B. Journal B at publisher B then published article B, by the same authors and affiliations. The two articles are on closely related research. Shortly after publicati… - Case
Author admits failure to credit other authors
An author submitted a manuscript and stated that he was the sole author. The manuscript received a favourable peer review and eventually was accepted. Some time after the article was published, a co-author told the author to contact the journal to correct the author list. The author of record (AOR) did this and supplied co-author names to the journal. The editor worked with the author… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…Processing Charge is capped. This will likely have the consequence of prohibiting some researchers from submitting to elite journals, while for the journals there is concern that they will either be receiving lower quality papers or have to cut expenses by decreasing reviewing and editing. In the Sept 20, 2018, an argument is made to impose a submission fee and if the paper is accepted, then having an APC… - Case
Simultaneous publication
…X was published in Journal A about 3 weeks before Paper Y. The two paper superficially do not look similar and Paper X contains results that are not in Paper Y. However, the two papers also contain highly similar results and make similar key conclusions. Truth be told, all of the additional results presented in Paper X were added during revisions. The authors of Paper X knew that Paper Y had been… - Case
Requesting authorship after publication
…believed that an acknowledgment was appropriate, but then recommended the addition of Dr H as an author. We maintain that an acknowledgment is appropriate, and that adding him as an author without fulfilling ICMJE criteria (journal policy) would be the equivalent of gift authorship. Question(s) for the COPE Forum• Based on ICMJE criteria and journal policy, does the Forum believe… - Case
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
The editorial team took the feedback from the COPE Forum on board and notified the corresponding author’s institution of the allegations; the case is still being considered by the research integrity team at the institution. In addition, an editorial note has been added to the article to alert readers that concerns had been raised about the overlap between the original article and the student’s… - Case
Dispute over submitted comment and the right to be forgotten
…we have not heard from you, we will publish the comment without your reply'. If the authors refuse to reply formally and answer the points, then an editorial note can be added that the authors were invited but declined to reply. Ultimately the decision of how best to correct the literature should fall to the editor, so the complication that the new editor-in-chief does not want to be… - Case
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
…that it had not been consulted or involved in drafting the article, and added that none of its members was an author on the paper. In the paper, there is only mention of the consensus between the two scientific societies in the title, and the body of the paper only includes the actual clinical recommendations. Moreover, the authors of the published article only included their clinical affiliations…