- Case
Plagiarism
…institutions. Inform the advisory board. Retract the article. Check all the articles from the authors. Remove the offenders from the editorial board. … - Case
Habitual plagiarist
The Forum agreed that this appears to be a clearcut case of plagiarism. The editor should retract the article. The Forum advised the editor to consult COPE’s retraction guidelines, which are published on the COPE website. The editor should state in the retraction notice the reason for the retraction. The Forum also advised the editor to follow the COPE flowchart on “Suspected plagiarism in… - Case
Duplicate submission and request for withdrawal
…waited for the acceptance before withdrawing from journal A. Journal A contacted journal B to explain the duplicate submission, and that the authors requested withdrawal, citing doubts in the validity of their paper’s data. Questions for the COPE Forum Should journal B retract the paper on these grounds? What happens if journal B does not receive… - Case
Authorship dispute regarding author order
…comments on the changes that other co-authors suggested. The paper was published on early view later in the year. In 2016, author B requested retraction of the paper immediately, alleging that the agreement was voided by the changes made during proofing. The paper is still on early view and has not been included in a print issue. The journal has corresponded with all four authors and… - Case
Institution refuses to investigate scientific issues
…conclusions are not sound, retract the paper. The publisher would tell the institution the route they plan to take. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Are the publisher’s plans reasonable, or is there a better course of action? Regardless of whether an expression of concern/publisher's note is published, or the paper is retracted, is it reasonable to quote… - Case
Withdrawal of acceptance based on potentially unconsented data
Two papers were retracted (without dispute from the authors) after a lengthy investigation. It was discovered that some of the data used in these articles were gathered without participant consent for the study or for publication (no participants are identifiable). The investigation was conducted by a public body in the country of the authors, and the journal has been told that they will not… - Case
Reviewer anonymity in post publication peer review
…of the article and made the decision to retract the article. The authors were informed of this decision together with the reasons behind it. The authors have challenged the editor’s decision to retract, claiming that the editor has not followed due process by giving them an opportunity to respond to the methodological concerns and that the editor has failed to adhere to their journals… - Case
Dispute over submitted comment and the right to be forgotten
…remove the paper in order to protect their reputation. They also claimed that the comment was libellous and a personal attack, however in the view of the journal it is a balanced criticism that only discusses the methods used. When the journal explained that a withdrawal would be titled a retraction and that the original article would still be available from their website (as recommended by COPE), the… - Case
Undeclared conflict of interest
…the editors. - The journal launched an investigation with the authors' knowledge, and in conjunction with the institution, where the research was conducted. This concluded that the first two allegations were unfounded. But the undisclosed conflict of interest allegation was upheld. Ten of the 13 co-authors subsequently issued a partial retraction and an investigation by the national regulatory body… - Case
Compromised peer review system in published papers
…that the papers’ co-authors were not aware of this activity. Author A has agreed to retract published papers for which they admit to influencing the peer review process and we are planning retraction notices for these. We are now seeking advice as to what to do about the remaining published papers to which author A has not admitted influencing the peer review process. We suspect the peer… - Case
Authorship dispute
…addition, they did not have any patient consent.(3) The paper published in journal X was the original manuscript and it was circulated to all of the authors.(4) The name of author B was misspelled in journal X by mistake. Author B requests that the paper must be retracted from journal X, and he also demands that the editors ensure that the paper will disappear from PubMed. In… - Case
Undisclosed conflict of interest
…incentives” from CMG. We consulted the original peer reviewers, showing them the updated COI. They said they would not have accepted the manuscript had they known about these extensive COIs. We suggested to the authors that we feel that both articles should be retracted, and we would prefer to do this with their consent. The lead author rejected this with the argument that “we originally… - Case
Author requesting removal of verbatim text from published paper
…author A. But neither is true. These are whole passages lifted from the work of author A. An internet search of the words contained in author A’s work will wrongfully and fraudulently show up as belonging to author B. Question(s) for the Forum How can the publisher correct the publication record in this instance? Should the publisher retract the… - Case
Paper submitted for publication without consent or knowledge of co-authors
…editor-in-chief of journal A with a request to retract the published article claiming the following:• Co-author A claims that this paper was submitted to journal A by CA during her absence (maternity leave).• Co-author A claims that she and the other 7 co-authors (authors B, C, D, E, F, G and H) were not informed about the publication in journal A by CA.• Co-author A claims that 90% of the… - Case
Possible duplicate publication
An article by a Far Eastern group was published in our journal in November 2005. We were later alerted by an interested reader that the same article, slightly changed, was published in an American journal. I contacted the American journal and the article will now be officially retracted from that journal. Part of the explanation could be poor communication between the authors, but I am not… - Case
Retrospective correction: how far back do we go?
_ There are three main issues: the continuing possibility of harm, pollution of the scientific literature, and results that had been obtained through scientific fraud. _ There should be no time limit on retractions, but editors cannot be expected to retract all obsolete work. _ An editorial on “lessons in retraction” could be written, airing concerns that had come to light recently, to which… - Case
Submission of article by ghost author
…authors listed on the article were ghost authors. The committee decided to retract the paper and publish it with the name of original author. However the original author is not willing to publish it in this journal. Question for COPE Council Please guide us for the solution (withdrawal, retraction or any other) … - Case
Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication
…this paper had been published with an incomplete author list and that they wanted the paper retracted as they had not been included. After discussions with the editors of the journal, a corrigendum was agreed as the best way forward to amend the author list, as there was nothing scientifically wrong with the paper. In the course of the conversations with E1, it became clear that R1 was… - Case
Satire in scholarly publishing
…article for the situation and demanded that they apologise to the authors of the systematic review and retract the original satirical article. The editor’s argument was that there is no room for ‘nonsense’ in scholarly publishing, and that such articles take publication space away from real scientific articles that could be published in their place. The authors of the satirical article responded… - Case
Image manipulation case
…Subsequently, the whistleblower contacted the journal to ask that they retract the article because there were more problems with the work of these authors in other journals. The journal replied that they base our decisions on the material provided to them and according to the journal’s standards. The journal was contacted again independently by two different readers pointing them to a blog alleging…