- Case
Controversy surrounding ethics approval
…and main institutional investigation, an editorial note could be added for clarification with agreement of the authors: it shouldn’t be necessary to ask the other institutions.… - News
Paper mills in the news
…four key stages of paper mill strategy, including: assistance with scientific consulting; adding project design; data collection, analysis and ghostwriting; ghostwriting companies which provide falsified data; and paper trading companies, which organise the sale of papers. Professor Sabel was also one of the organisers of a symposium held in June, organised in collaboration with Felix… - Case
Confidentiality and consent in case reports
…mandatory. Indeed, we would like to suggest that where the doctor is satisfied that the information can be anonymised, he/she does not need to try to obtain consent. We have considered adding a statement in the journal for patients who might read it, and recognise or believe that they recognise themselves, or their story. One of our founder members addressed this very idea in the preface of a book,… - News
COPE at COMPARE Life Sciences Workshop on Authorship, UK
…added to papers) and how difficult is it to determine the extent to which this occurs. There was general agreement that the use of authorship order to indicate involvement in contributions to a paper is outdated, and personal contributions need to be recognised. It was heartening to hear senior Principal Investigators share that when they consider people for roles in their labs it is not about… Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via paper mills: Forum discussion topic September 2020
…href="https://publicationethics.org/publishing-manipulation-paper-mills">Read the full discussion Your comments Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting. Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member or register as a non-member to post comments…- News
Facilitation & integrity: name changes
…request, and COPE had supported their position and suggested that a note mentioning the name change could be added to the article. The journal offered to issue a publisher’s note outlining the name change and noted that agreement from all co-authors would be sought before the change was implemented. The author expressed concern about the requirement to obtain approval by the co-authors; they… - Case
Retrospective correction: how far back do we go?
…which said that misuse of this particular tube could lead to tracheal stenosis, and that whether the child was dysmorphic or whether he did not eventually require a tracheostomy was irrelevant, adding “we believe that the child was fortunate not to need tracheostomy. ” This issue was resurrected because over nine years after the original publication one of the authors of the critical letter offered… - Case
Is it duplicate publication when the first study is referenced in the second paper?
…identical axes but the curve is slightly different. Tabular data show the two papers’ subject groups have different age ranges, but the breakdown of boys to girls is very similar as is the breakdown of the subtypes of the condition being treated. All of the references in paper B are used in paper A, but the authors have added six extra references, one of which is the reference to paper B. The reference to… - Case
Attempt at dual publication
…Some suggested that in the future, the commissioning letter should state that there should be no significant overlap of information between any two papers, and perhaps this should also be added to the instructions to authors. There was disagreement as to whether the first journal should be contacted, with some arguing that it should, while others suggested that as this was an attempt and not a breach… - Case
Suspicious responses to authorship change requests
…a misunderstanding and that they still wanted at least author E to be added. The publisher reiterated that consent from author D was outstanding, even for that one change. Author A again chased author D, and the publisher suddenly received a follow-up email stating they agreed to be removed as a co-author. However, that email was even more suspicious; a third non-institutional email address was introduced, the… - Forum discussion topics
Author behavioural misconduct
…these issues (e.g. the author harrassment webinar session with Randy Townsend from The American Geophysical Union). Publishers and editors may have to think about how and how far to offer support to authors who are in… - News
Case discussion: Possible breach of reviewer confidentiality
…reviewing to their colleagues or students, and this is a breach of confidentiality. There may have been such a breach at any of the other three journals or even during review at grant application stage. The Forum agreed that the editor had handled the complaint appropriately. The editor added that the journal’s instructions were clear about respecting confidentiality and informing the journal if other… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…://publicationethics.org/cope-north-american-seminar-2019 This will be discussed at the start of the next COPE Forum on Monday 11 February 2019. Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member or register…- News
Update on COPE guidance regarding author name changes
…vision for a more trans-inclusive publishing world. Written by some members of the group, with other colleagues, the editorial powerfully articulates why this guidance is needed and details five guiding principles and best practices. At the group’s recommendation, COPE has recently added a note to a case about… - Case
CV study: was ethics approval and consent required?
…as it was an audit formal ethical approval was not warranted. The authors added that they did not ask for "permission" from the doctors as they felt implicit in the questionnaire was the fact that their answers would be used as part of the audit. The questionnaire was completely anonymous, they said, so to have asked the doctors “to sign a statement would have destroyed feelings of confidentiality… - Case
Extensive publication errors. Should we 're-publish'?
…that all corrections would be made before publication. When the excerpt was published, some corrections appeared, but new errors were added to the earlier problems. Figures were out of order. Some captions were incomplete, others were incorrect. Paragraphs of text were scrambled and appeared as gibberish. We contacted our publication editor immediately, and requested that we be allowed to… - Case
Duplicate publication and removal of article
…article is currently only available in journal A. Hence the only way of having transparency around this case is for a formal note to be added to journal A. It is essential that the formal note is a form that can be indexed and is citable. It could be an addendum, if that is linked to the article or an expression of concern. The Forum also noted that the authors should be made aware that… - Case
Reviewer concerns about transparency of peer review process
…accused the editors of behaving in a non-transparent manner and even of being unethical, because: (1) we did not publish the content of the critical peer review and (2) we did not have a disclaimer on the text stating that reviewers were not responsible for the content of the published manuscript (which we had assumed was obvious). We have thus begun the process of adding the following disclaimer… - Case
When to conclude correspondence from reader about errors in a published article
…exchange of correspondence should take place privately between Dr A and the authors.2. The journal added the following statement to their editorial policy on items of correspondence: “Only one letter may be submitted by any single author or group of authors on any one published paper”.… - Case
Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
…the board found that this case did meet its definition, based on the excessive volume of verbatim sentences shared between the two articles. In the light of this development, a note was added on the front page of the article to this effect. The editor also notified journal B of their decision. The editor considers the case closed. …