- Case
Letter to the editor and retraction notice
A Letter to the Editor was submitted to Journal A – this Letter contained major criticisms of a paper previously published in Journal A, in particular of the statistical analysis underpinning the conclusions and the study design, and called for its retraction. The Editor sent the Letter out for peer review and some revisions were made by the authors. Based on both the content of the Letter and… - Event
Publication Integrity Week 2023
…easier and quicker to resolve. Following the panel discussion the conversation opened to questions from attendees. Tuesday 3 October: PUBLICATION MISCONDUCT AND FRAUD DAY For the first time we dedicated a day of our seminar programme to the threat presented by misconduct and fraud and how we can work together to combat these issues. - Case
Change in author’s name after publication
An original work was published in our journal in September 2010. The article had five authors. Now, in February 2013, the third author is requesting an alteration in his/her name. The original name published was SFHS. The request is to change the name to SFH, both on the journal's website and Medline. No valid reason could be provided by the author for this change in name. The last name… - Case
Inadequately supervised research?
Neither the lead author nor one of the supervisors accepted that there was any problem with the research. The case was referred to the journal’s ethics committee. All the authors denied there was a problem with the research. The supervisor expressed concern that (1) the editorial committee felt it had a remit to question the adequacy of the PhD supervision; (2) that by writing directly to… - Case
Temporary exception to double anonymised review policy
The journal conducts double-anonymous reviews of all manuscripts submitted. As part of the decision process, reviewers routinely receive a copy of the decision letter, which includes reviewers’ comments. In the transition to a new editorial staff, a change to the email template inadvertently meant that the full letter was sent out, including the corresponding author’s name. Before this was… - Case
Duplicate publication
…publishers of those journals at risk of legal action. Faced with this problem of duplication publication, another less risky route might be for editors to develop a “grey list” of those authors who may have transgressed in this regard, in order that special attention may be paid to articles they submit.… - Case
Possible image manipulation
A whistleblower posted on PubPeer regarding some apparently overlapping images in an article published several years earlier. To the research integrity team there appeared similarities, enough to warrant a request for the original images / raw data from the authors. The authors said they no longer had access to the original data and have denied any editing was made to the images. We… - Case
Reprimanded author plagiarizes again
…first. Again, the corresponding author A, when asked to comment, apologized profusely.We are unsure how to treat this, as the sections copied are not too extensive. However, given the author's history, we feel the need to issue a ban or possibly notify the institute? Does the Forum agree?… - Case
Unethical private practice
This single author manuscript describes the treatment of 300 women with psychological problems. The women were randomised to either therapy or pharmacological intervention, and this study reports the relative effectiveness of these strategies. At submission, the manuscript did not contain any mention of ethics approval, consent or trial registration. When the author was queried on these… - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2019: Just ideas? The Status and Future of Publication Ethics in Philosophy
At the 2019 COPE North American Seminar, Rebecca Kennison, from K|N Consultants, presented details of a project which "seeks to foster greater awareness among humanities scholars and editors about ethical issues in philosophy publishing…. [It] acknowledges that research and publication ethics in the humanities are in many ways, and for good reasons, complex matters and that, unlike in… - Case
Suspect author
…contacted the current editors of seven other affected specialty journals, who until this point were largely unaware of the problem, or its extent, having not been in post at the time the papers were submitted to their journals. We have since been discussing the problem and possible courses of action. The points raised are: (1) Regarding the older papers: (i) the journals themselves do not… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: February 2022
…a live stream option for those who cannot attend in person. COPE will be participating in a panel session that will discuss the complexities involved in determining how and when to include the different stakeholders – journals, publishers, institutions, and national oversight bodies – when ethics cases are exposed. I, as COPE Chair, will moderate the discussion, and the panelists include Elisabeth Bik,… - Case
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
An article was submitted to our journal (journal A) in March. According to the journal’s working policy, the article was initially reviewed inhouse and comments were sent to the author. The authors replied to the comments but did not agree to the suggestion to convert the article to a short report. A rather impolite letter was sent by the author criticising the policies of the journal. We sent… - Case
Author requests for certain experts not to be included in the editorial process
…certain experts not to be involved in reviewing their paper?” is yes—the author is entitled to make this request, but the editor does not have to feel bound to exclude specific reviewers. Otherwise there is potential manipulation of the peer review system by the author. The author should give reasons for his requests. Some noted that it depends on how many experts the author asks not to be involved in… - Translated resources
Webinar 2020: research and publishing ethics challenges and best practices
…good research practice & production of high-quality science, 2014 Protecting the Integrity of the Research Record, 2018 Publication ethics cases Cases submitted by COPE members give real world examples of research and publication ethics issues, with advice on how to handle them and how to avoid them. Read the - Seminars and webinars
North American Seminar 2019: Women also know history
Karin Wulf, Professor of History and well-known “Chef” in the Scholarly Kitchen introduced us to the terms “manels” and “whanels” (all male panels and all white panels) and provided some suggestions to help identify a more diverse group of experts from which to draw authors, reviewers, editorial board… - Case
Attempt to supress legitimate scientific results
The journal is operated by institute A, and the editor is an employee of institute A. A manuscript was submitted late in 2014 by authors from institute B, a similar type of organisation in the same country. The manuscript was reviewed by two referees who both recommended publication following minor revision. One of the reviewers noted that the abstract contained a vague statement related to… - News
In the news: February Digest
…href="https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188 The Russian Academy of Science appointed a commission to address unethical publication practices in Russia. A report from the commission released in January 2020 was described as a "bombshell" leading to retraction of more than 800 papers, published in primarily Russian-language journals. Problems with plagiarism, text-recycling,… Consensus statement on research misconduct in the UK by COPE and BMJ
…of good ethical and scientific standards (Edinburgh 1999). Research misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, suppression, or inappropriate manipulation of data; inappropriate image manipulation; plagiarism; misleading reporting; redundant publication; authorship malpractice such as guest or ghost authorship; failure to disclose funding sources or competing interests; misreporting of funder…- Case
Handling self-admissions of fraud
…laboratory notebook. We feel this reason is not sufficient to counter self-admission of fraud as someone who intentionally fakes data would not likely record it in their laboratory notebook. We therefore were unsatisfied with recommendation to take no further action. In July 2015, we interviewed the first author via Skype and asked him to describe again how he generated the data and how he…