- Event
COPE Forum: December 2023
…="https://publicationethics.org/resources/forum-discussion-topics/claiming-university-affiliations">Claiming institutional affiliations. 3. New cases Cases submitted by COPE Members for discussion at the Forum. How to handle offers of promotion of authorship for sale S - Case
Accusation of theft of a model
During refereeing of an article, one of the referees made an accusation of theft regarding a model described in the article. The referee and the authors had been collaborating on a review article previously, but had fallen out. The journal requested evidence from the parties. This involved several rounds of requests to the accuser, as the journal felt that the accuser was not providing… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2021: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/caroline-porter">Caroline Porter, COPE Trustee and Executive Publisher at SAGE Publishing, examined issues around historical offensive content and the damage that it perpetuates, and how to mitigate it. Caroline highlighted the key themes of challenges, in the scale of the problem, defining what is offensive or inappropriate, identifying the offensive content and creating systematic solutions to catching all… - News
Intellectual property focus
…PDF versions of published articles. If yournals charge author fees for submission/production or for open access publishing (article processing charge or APC), they must explain when and how the fee, and how much, is collected, and that APC colection is separate from editorial decision making. The increased availability of preprint platforms for authors to upload manuscript drafts for peer… - Case
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
We have been contacted by a reviewer after he spotted a paper he had reviewed for us (journal 1) now published in a second journal (journal 2). Both journals are members of COPE. The reviewer had advised we reject the paper when it was sent to him to review in September 2008. This was based on his assessment of the paper and also the supplementary material he was sent by us: protocol, CONSORT… - Event
American Academy of Pain Management annual meeting
Rachel Safer, COPE Council, will be presenting at the American Academy of Pain Medicine (AAPM) about publication ethics, during the session on preparing, writing and submitting work for publication. For more information visit AAPM… - Case
When to conclude correspondence from reader about errors in a published article
A reader, Dr A, wrote to the editors explaining a number of concerns she had with some of the figures in a paper published in the journal. The editors sought the advice of an associate editor with more expertise in the subspecialty of the paper. The associate editor concurred with Dr A’s opinion of the paper and the authors were invited to respond. After some back and forth correspondence, the… - Case
Author refusal to sign an ethics form
A journal has received a submission which is based on patient data (CT scan images). The data have been found to have been taken from an open-source repository. The authors are refusing to sign an Ethics Approval and Consent for Authors form. Questions for the Forum Is a signature in these cases compulsory? How would the Forum recommend we… - Event
Association for Research Ethics (AfRE): Effecting cultural change in research ethics and integrity
Commitment 3 of the ‘Concordat to Support Research Integrity’ creates an expectation that institutions will “nurture a culture of integrity”. Encouraging a culture of integrity in research should be the cornerstone in any ethical organisation. But what does it mean and how can it be promoted? This is a workshop for anyone involved with the ethics of research who wants to explore ways to tackle… - News
Attention COPE members! Changes to the website
The COPE website is undergoing a redesign which involves moving the members database. While this is ongoing, members will not be able to change their details on the website. Members will be able to continue using the website, browsing all the content. Members will also be able to login and submit cases, but will not be able to change their personal details or the details of the journal.… - Case
Ethical concerns and the validity of documentation supplied by the authors
We became concerned that not all of the co-authors were aware of a research paper submitted to our journal due to the difficulty receiving responses from the email addresses that had been supplied and their nature, given that the authors all worked in a hospital/academic institution. Despite repeated requests and attempts we remained dissatisfied with the responses and did not feel certain… - News
In the news: December 2018 Digest
…published between 2015 and 2017, about 2/3 included statements on funding and conflicts of interests and about 20% mentioned publicly available data. In a similar study from 2000 to 2014, very few papers included this type of information. COPE Council member Nancy Chescheir - News
COPE North American Seminar and Forum 2011
COPE is pleased to announce its 3rd North American Seminar and Forum. The COPE Forum will take place on the afternoon of 31st October (2–5 pm) followed by a whole day Seminar on 1st November.The theme of this year’s Seminar is Authorship. More details can be found here.… - Event
COPE North American Seminar and Forum 2012
The theme of this year’s seminar repeats that of the recent successful European seminar, “Correcting the literature”, which will encompass all of the issues involved, including why corrections are needed, the appropriate ways to deal with them in terms of expressions of concern, corrections and retractions, the scale of the problem and what can go wrong. Editors, publishers, authors and all… - Case
Author alleges discrimination by institutional report
…protocols were approved by the IACUC, which is against journal policy. The journal considered this sufficient information to proceed with retraction of the article. After informing the corresponding author of the retraction notice, the author responded that the conflict was an authorship dispute and that they have been the target of racial discrimination at the institution. The journal and… - Case
Should this paper be retracted?
…critical issue or scientific misconduct. However, both parties were asked to clarify the issue of data ownership and paper authorship with all of the persons involved and to produce a formal declaration, with the agreement and undersigned by all persons involved. In particular, the journal proposed one of the following options: leave the paper published as it stands, change the list of authors, publish… - Case
The single authored, unbelievable, randomised controlled trial
…and, if true, the results were extremely dramatic. The paper was sent for statistical review. The reviewer suggested that the paper bore all the hallmarks of being entirely invented. The results were unbelievably dramatic for the kind of health problem reported. The president of the university was asked to investigate.… - News
APAME and CASE Joint Convention 2018: Report
…Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and the 10 COPE Core Practices to the 250+ conference attendees. On 19 July, he presented some suggestions on how to improve scholarly journals for international indexing, focusing on promoting ethical peer review and publishing practices, developing clear journal guidelines that comply with all the… - News
Welcome to COPE's new Trustee
…COPE's new Trustee Suzanne Farley We're pleased to welcome Suzanne Farley as COPE's new Trustee, bringing years of experience in publication ethics. Suzanne is Research Integrity Director at Springer Nature. Springer Nature's Research Integrity Group provides policy… - Case
The study that may or may not already have been published
A study purported to have been stimulated by a systematic review that had already been published in the journal. The new study included 15 patients who had been treated in one arm of a study and 15 who had been treated in another arm. The peer reviewers noticed that the original systematic review included 31 patients from the same authors. The editor contacted the authors asking them to make…