- News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute
Case number18-07 The case we are highlighting for March involves an escalating authorship dispute as well as management of the post publication correction process (Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute: 18-07). Cases brought to the COPE Forum are often complex and involve multiple problems, which is the case here. Case Summary After publication… - News
In the news: April 2021
…accessible to authors, comprehensive and invisible, in order to protect the authors. A survey showed that the workforce of respondent University Presses is "extremely white" (815) with 64% of the work force being cis-gender women and 79% straight-identifying. The authors - Case
Call for retraction of a commentary
…redacted/retracted were simply unprofessional and unethical. The editor-in-chief invited the parties to submit a letter to the editor in which they could raise all of their critical points. Instead, one of them submitted a letter signed by 18 scientists in their home country in which they refuted points in the commentary and demanded that the commentary be retracted. A second invitation to submit a formal… - News
Announcement of COPE Council elections
…Council membership should be nominated by two other current members of COPE, at least one of whom must not be employed by the same organisation as the nominee. The closing date for applications is 18 January 2013. COPE council member: role description Purpose of role To be responsible, together with other council members, for the… - News
Upcoming CrossRef webinars
…/>Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York), 4:00 pm (London)Moderator: Rachael LammeyRegistration Date: Thursday, July 18, 2013Time: 8:00 am (San Francisco), 11:00 am (New York),… - News
Journal management focus
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents">COPE Discussion documents, for example, the recent one on the emergence of preprints and how to deal with them, • and the COPE e-learning courses. COPE resources about journal management and training complement those of several other… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: February 2021
…on this to follow. On 10 February, we delivered an online authorship cases workshop. This workshop will be repeated for different time zones on 24 February at 17.00-18.30pm (AWST)/9.00-10.30am (GMT). The topic of the COPE Forum on 23 March is book… - News
In the news: March & April 2022
…="https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/process-towards-agreement-reforming-research-assessment-2022-jan-18_en">join a coalition on reforming research assessment. Ethical oversight What does a Director of Research Integrity do? An interview with Sabina Alam of T&F. Clarivate has a 1-hour online course for editors, authors and peer reviewers about - Case
Publisher and stakeholder with misaligned conflict of interest policies
…not align with our own. Stakeholder A’s review committees undertake a number of functions for the group themselves; review of our pathways is an additional role they have taken on over the past 18 months. They collect the statements on a voluntary basis annually (or as new committee members join) and it is their current policy not to share those declarations with any outside group. The stakeholder… - Case
Plagiarism of published paper
On 18 June the editor sent an email to all of the authors informing them that we were concerned about a possible case of plagiarism and asking the authors to provide an explanation. A deadline of 2 weeks was offered and we informed them that we would contact the universities involved after this date. The corresponding author replied that he was not aware of this manuscript and he believed… - Case
Peer reviewer contacted by author
In a single anonymous peer review process, a reviewer gave an author detailed suggestions about improvements in the statistical analysis. The author was asked to revise and resubmit the paper to address these and other reviewers' suggestions. The author, unaware of the reviewer’s identity, subsequently approached the reviewer as a respected colleague at a professional meeting to discuss the man… - Event
COPE Forum: September 2023
…href="https://publicationethics.org/case/author-refusal-sign-ethics-form">Author refusal to sign an ethics form 23-18 Author retracts request to be removed from author list 23-19 Handling undisclosed peer reviewer conflict Cases submitted… - News
In the news: January 2019 Digest
…href="https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/12/18/tangled-web-of-editorial-interests/ " target="_blank">https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/12/18/tangled-web-of-editorial-interests/ Ethical Oversight The ICMJE has updated its guidelines. Changes include more guidance on COIs, a recommendation on reducing the use of the impact factor as a measure of quality, the use of preprint servers and the depositing of data, and reporting of clinical trials. - Case
HIV homeopathy
The authors carried out a study. A homeopathic treatment was given to people with HIV/AIDs. The outcome was quality of life, as measured by a questionnaire after 1 month and 18 months of treatment. Participants were selected for inclusion if they had a HIV seropositive status at the time of study and were not taking any other kind of HIV/AIDs treatment. The participants were stratified… - Case
Extensive publication errors. Should we 're-publish'?
In March 2012, our journal published a posthumous excerpt of a book by a prestigious scholar, who had died before completing the book. We chose to publish because the unfinished book represented the scholar's life work, and would not find another publication venue. The excerpt included a number of large figures, which we also published. At our publisher, we had a new production team, and… - Case
Licence for a published scale
We have received a number of manuscripts involving a published scale where the scale’s developer is known to comb the literature and ask those who used the scale for research to pay for a retroactive license, sometimes asking for very large sums of money. We have started asking authors on all submissions where the scale is used to provide a copy of the license agreement with the scale’s… - Case
Previous publication cannot be verified
Publisher A received a concern suggesting that a coauthored paper published in one of their journals had previously been published by the complainant in an industry in-house journal (now disbanded). All three individuals had worked for the company which sponsored the in-house journal. The publisher asked for a contact at the company so that they could request information about their publication… - Case
Self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
Journal A accepted a manuscript with six authors in June 2017, which was published in January 2018. Several months later, the editors of journal A found that journal B had published paper B, which shared striking similarities to paper A. Journal B accepted paper B in November 2017 and published it in February 2018. The first author of paper B was different but the remaining four authors were fr… - News
Case discussion: Low-risk study with no ethics committee approval
…style="color:#0563c1; text-decoration:underline">03-05, 18-01, and 18-04). Finally, consent may be needed not only for human participation, but also for… - Case
Journal refuses to correct the record
…a retraction notice and a watermark on each page that indicated the article was retracted. He agreed to this but did not know how to do it, so the journal prepared the document for him. This was done on 18 February 2013 and the journal is waiting for him to upload this version to his website. Update (December 2013)The original article PDF and the "retraction notice" appear in…