- Case
Secondary analysis of medical records and ethics committee approval
A journal received a manuscript using secondary analysis of existing medical records in which there was no indication that ethics approval was obtained from a recognized ethics review board or that participants gave their informed consent to be included in the study. Instead, the authors explained that the study had been based on a secondary analysis of existing medical records and that no pati… - Case
Ethical issues of responding to government agency request for information
A journal published several articles, reviewed by reviewers recommended by the author, that were identified as suspect. After a thorough investigation, the journal determined that almost all of the peer review responses for these articles were fabricated - the result of identity misappropriation and fraud. The journal was subsequently contacted by two government agencies of the country… - Case
Retraction request after university investigation found no evidence of fraud
Dr X claimed to have found fabrication and falsification of data in an article submitted for publication by Dr Y. Dr Y’s university investigated and found no evidence of fraud but a genuine error in the figure. Dr X provided more information and a further investigation was initiated. It again dismissed the complaint as unfounded. The paper was then published. Dr X is now asking the journal for… - News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…incentives, expert support, training, and the infrastructure to make easy and worth their while to share data.http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2018/04/16/we… - 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
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2019
The 16th-20th of September is Peer Review Week, with this year's theme Quality In Peer Review. This is now an anticipated time in the calendar for many of our members around the world and a number of events focus on issues related to peer review and publication ethics and integrity. As a long time editor of journals and books, I know… - News
In the news: July & August 2022
…href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/06/16/study-retractions-take-too-long-curb-misinformation">new study in PNAS which found that by the time a paper is retracted, public attention is already diminished. Data and reproducibility A study has found that many researchers do not comply with their… - Case
Publication of papers from industry sponsored symposium
Our scientific/medical Society added a Special Symposium to its Annual Meeting Program. The symposium organiser, who is an academic member of the Society, invited seven speakers, all from academic institutions, in addition to himself to speak at the symposium. Support for the symposium as a whole was solicited independently by the Development Committee of the Society and had no influence on the… - Case
Low risk study with no ethics committee approval
A manuscript was submitted to our journal that describes a social media advocacy campaign that was run by an international NGO for the purpose of eliciting public support for a new law in a low-middle income country. The authors are from the NGO and the government department in that country, that together funded and ran the campaign, and also collected and analysed the data used in the manuscri… - Case
Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy
The journal conducts double-anonymous reviews of all manuscripts submitted. As part of the decision process, reviewers routinely receive a copy of the decision letter, which includes reviewers’ comments. In the transition to a new editorial staff, a change to the email template inadvertently meant that the full letter was sent out, including the corresponding author’s name. Before this was disc… - Case
Boundaries of duplicate submission
A paper was submitted to journal A. The reviewers were enthusiastic but raised substantive concerns. The editorial decision was 'reject with resubmission allowed', providing the authors the opportunity to submit a revision if they feel all concerns can be addressed. The authors elected to submit substantially the same report to journal B. The outcome was essentially the same; the paper was reje… - Case
Post-publication correction because of lack of consent
An article that has been published in our journal has subsequently been found to have serious ethical issues. The authors did not seek the correct ethics approval from their institution before conducting the research (which involves human subjects). They also did not obtain informed consent from the research participants prior to publication. The article in question is a case study of a… - Case
Image manipulation case
A journal was contacted by a non-anonymous whistleblower pointing out problems with two figures in a published paper. The journal wrote to the authors, who provided them with films for the gels and an explanation and additional figure data for the histology image, where a mistake was made when assembling the images. The journal published an erratum and informed the whistleblower. Subsequ… - Case
Plagiarism case
Journal X was contacted by Author A, who claimed that a paper published in that journal ten years previously (by Author B) was plagiarised from Author A’s article in Journal Y published approximately ten years prior to that. Author A requested the retraction of Author B’s paper. Journal X has run plagiarism software on both papers to see the degree of text replication and it is not signi… - Case
Author with recidivist behaviour involving simultaneous submissions
An author submitted manuscript A to Journal 1 and to Journal 2 in consecutive months, both journals published by the same publisher. The author had previously submitted another manuscript to Journal 3 and informed the journal that the paper had been already published by another journal when the proofs were received. Journal 1 and Journal 2 have decided to withdraw the manuscript. Journa… - News
Case discussion: self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
…should not rely solely on a certain cut-off percentage score (as advised in COPE Forum cases 15-16 profusion of copied text passages and Seminars
…[13.18] Conflicts of interest in medical publishing — Professor Christopher Baethge, Chief Scientific Editor of Deutsches Ärzteblatt (Germal Medical Journal) and Deutsches Ärzteblatt International Download presentation [PDF 1679kB] | Watch presentation [12:16…- News
COPE response to Science paper submission of fake paper, by Virginia Barbour, on behalf of COPE council
…publishing industry and peer review’s place in it. It may further confuse the public who genuinely struggle to understand what they should trust in the myriad of research findings that are published each day. What are the constructive next steps?First, COPE was founded as an organisation… Consensus statement on research misconduct in the UK by COPE and BMJ
16 February 2012 A BMJ/COPE high level meeting in London on 12 January 2012 agreed the following statement: This meeting believes that the UK’s mechanisms for ensuring good research conduct and investigating research misconduct need to be strengthened Research misconduct is defined as behaviour by a researcher, intentional or not, that falls short…- Case
Question of paper retraction due to proven fabricated data
A published paper has been under legal scrutiny due to fabricated data. The court has concluded that the evidence presented undermined the credibility of the study. We have read the COPE guidelines for retracting an article and have checked the flowchart 'What to do if you expect fabricated data'. From reading the guidelines it seems that the editor has the right to retract the paper and to do…