- Case
Plagiarism in a book title
…a lawyer because he is not in agreement. So far we have not heard anything from this lawyer. Dr A now requests a statement from publisher on the case. We believe there are strong personal issues at work here. With books, there is no editor-in-chief that can investigate the case or make a decision with help of his editorial board/associate editors or other body in the form of a society. At… - Case
Low risk study with no ethics committee approval
…nature of the data reported in the manuscript is not of a sensitive nature, and the study would generally be considered a low risk project (answering an online survey about how the participant found out about the campaign and demographics of respondents etc). The authors state that all respondents agreed to participate in the research. However, the study has not been reviewed or approved by… - Case
Satire in scholarly publishing
The Forum noted that it is up to individual editors or publishers to decide what they publish, and if publishing these types of articles is a valuable use of their page budget. Editors should not be told by other editors or journals what they can and cannot include in their journal. Hence it is not reasonable for the other journal editor to request retraction of the satirical article. There… - Case
Registration of a randomised control trial
…there may be rare exceptions of failure to registration. Accordingly, we asked the authors to provide the registration number if they had already registered it, or to register it (after implementation) if not yet and to declare the reasons for delayed registration. We also provided some links to registries that accept this type of delayed registration. We received a reply from the authors… - Case
Author refuses to comply with editorial review prior to production and publication
…annotations showing areas that need further work. The editor can give a deadline for a decision from the authors. The editor needs to explain that if the authors decline or do not reply by a certain date, the acceptance of the paper would be rescinded and any post-acceptance author fees refunded depending on journal policy. If that fails, another option would be to use another senior editor… - Case
Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy
Once a mistake like this has occurred, the journal should implement as transparent a policy as possible over their actions and mitigations. The journal should send the affected authors an apology, explaining what has happened and asking if they would like their work to be sent to an additional reviewer (which will take more time) or whether they are happy proceeding with a single anonymised… - Case
Image manipulation case
…suggests blunders rather than deliberate manipulation, so what occurred was more likely through mistake rather than malpractice. Nonetheless, if the role of the editor is to quality control the literature and the role of retraction is to remove fatally flawed work from the literature, can the editor now be sure that there are no further problems? So, the real issue is whether or not the rest of… - Case
Plagiarism case
…Author B regarding the issue to ask for their response. They have replied and their response was reasonable. Among the members of the journal’s editorial team, the general consensus is to not retract Author B’s paper, as it does bring new data into the literature. Question for COPE Council How should we address this situation? Would an editorial announcement or an… - Case
Submissions from members of the editorial board
Our journal has decided that members of the editorial board are allowed to submit manuscripts which will undergo peer-review directed by the present or former editor-in-chief. It can be difficult, and I would like to present one example. A group of authors (including one member of the editorial board) submitted five manuscripts during a period of 17 days. The handling of some… Membership subscription fees
…Number of issues Fees per year Less than 12 issues per year £195 12 or more issues per year £428 Publisher membership - 5 or more journals …- News
In the news: December Digest
…-we-choose-to-align-open-access-to-research-with-geo-political-borders-we-negate-the-moral-value-of-open-access/ A 2016 survey with a 17% response rate (507 of 3000) researchers in the Global South from the AuthorAID network explored their attitudes and experiences with open access publishing. About 40% noted limited or no access to academic literature. 89% always use Google to search for literature. 17% had deposited research into institutional repositories. 70% thought that OA research was useful or… - News
In the news: May 2021
…“end-to-end” system for the military to help them to ascertain whether the images and videos they collect are real or faked. In related research, funded by DARPA, the lab is developing a system that automatically screens scientific papers to determine whether they contain faked data. Image Processing and AI… - News
Guest editorial: Data availability statements
This is a guest editorial and opinions may not reflect official COPE guidance or policies. The gap between promise and reality Jasmine Jamshidi-Naeini[1], Andrew W. Brown[2],[3], Wasiuddin Najam[1], Colby J. Vorland[1], Stephanie Dickinson[1], David B. Allison[1] [1]Department of Epidemiology and… - Case
Who ensures the integrity of the editor?
…the journal was associated, outlining the journal’s editorial freedom. But after he left this began to change. A memo was sent from the association stipulating that any editorial material published in the journal from the association should have an elected official as the author, even if a researcher on staff or a scientific committee had written it.The editor questioned this policy on the basis… - Case
Possible fabricated data: a conspiracy of silence?
…said he was unaware of the papers until Dr X told him they had been accepted in the journals. Another co-author was unaware of when or where the studies took place. He said that Dr X had been suffering from depression for several years and had committed suicide. He had been included as a co-author on his last three articles more out of friendship than any active scientific cooperation. - Case
Falsification of certificates of deposit of new bacterial species in culture collections
…are viable and are available to other researchers without restrictions on their use for taxonomic research. This evidence takes the form of a “certificate” issued by the culture collection. This system has been developed to ensure that type strains are available for comparison with new strains isolated in the future, and to insure against collections going out of existence and/or changes in… - Case
Author non-disclosure by editor in chief
…the refinement of the text, their name should have been declared at the end of the editorial, particularly as Dr X was involved with the organisation that the editorial mentioned. We asked the editor to provide further clarification about Dr X’s involvement with the editorial. The editor replied to say that Dr X was a reviewer of his paper and that he, the editor, would not agree to general or even… - Case
Misrepresentation of journal decision on social media
…than request that the authors remove or modify their posts to social media, unless the authors have written something defamatory, in which case legal remedies may be available. The journal need not make individual reviewer recommendations public as the authors request. Sometimes decisions journal editors make will upset authors. Editors must, to a large degree, accept that. A reviewer is an… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship
…criteria. He also explored where authorship issues become unethical or fraudulent with examples of gift, guest and ghost authorship and others. Ethical authorship versus fraudulent authorship FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: How should a journal deal with persistent complainers?
Every so often a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. These complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these complaints turn out to be well founded, obviously there is a serious problem with the publication. However, we are aware of cases where a complainant continuously comes up with cases that turn out to be…