- News
New members: November 2019-April 2020
Welcome to new COPE members who have joined us as journal, publisher or associate members. New members have been assessed against criteria outlined in the Principles of Transparency. Signing up to COPE shows that they intend to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in… - Event
COPE Forum: July 2023
…or not you attend the Forum we welcome your comments to add to the discussion. --> 3. New cases Cases submitted by COPE Members for discussion at the Forum. - Case
A commentary on a piece of (unethical) research
…researchers had no clear prior hypotheses and had not done a power calculation. They have thus produced research that is very hard to interpret. (1) Is the research sufficiently unethical that we should not publish it? (2) Can we publish the research with a commentary arguing that it is unethical? If we so, should the authors be given the right of reply? (3) Or should we, as the authors argue, write the… - Case
The single authored, unbelievable, randomised controlled trial
…another approach. Though the paper has never been formally rejected or withdrawn, a very similar paper has been published, raising the issue of duplicate submission of the paper.… - Case
Babies needlessly subjected to a painful procedure for research
A paper was received, which detailed a research project conducted on newborn babies, which involved taking an invasive (and painful) sample from them. The paper was worthy of publication from the point of view of scientific value, but two issues worried the editors. First, it was unclear whether the sick babies’ samples were going to be used as part of their clinical management or whether… - Case
Going public on potential fraud
…produce the raw data for the investigation. X stated that the national regulatory body had stated in correspondence with him that it would leave it to the journal to decide on whether there was fraud or not. The editor stated that this was not the journal’s understanding of the national regulatory body’s judgment. The journal decided to wait for the outcome of the national regulatory body’s… - Case
Palestinian refugee conditions
…become part of the ongoing battleground of the near and Middle East. - Did the editors allow any political bias to affect the peer review or editorial decision making process?… - Case
Allegation of fraudulent publication
…both papers so the journal has all the information to hand. Each letter was approved by our legal department before it was sent so the process took a little longer to complete than expected. We do not yet have any response from either the author or the journal but hopefully we should hear soon. Further update (April 2007) Following dispatch of the letters referred… - Case
Author’s name removed from submitted article
…involvement as principal investigator, yet the submitted study made no mention of his involvement or his name. In addition, person X alleges that he contacted the funders before he left the Trust and they agreed that he should remain the principal investigator. To complicate matters a little, the Editor had been asked to serve on the steering committee for the study3-4 years previously, and did attend one… - Case
What constitutes authorship?
…themselves. Author Y indicated that this suggested approach was unacceptable, repeated that he should be added as an author on the paper regardless of the opinion of author X and did not accept the editor’s position that this matter could not be resolved arbitrarily in author Y's favour by the editor or the publisher. Author X has insisted on publication as the single author. The editor has continued to… - Case
A case of plagiarism?
…or expression of concern, and write a stern letter to the authors explaining that this type of behaviour is unacceptable. Hence the Forum was evenly split between recommending retraction versus publishing a correction together with a firm rebuke to the authors. In the end, it is the editor’s decision, but the editor should inform all of the authors of what action he plans to undertake.… - Research
Environmental scan of repositories of clinical research data: how far have we got with public disclosure of trial data? 2012
…websites of repositories, and engagement of relevant stakeholders – such as interviews with repository managers. We will aim to capture any methods of existing repositories for public disclosure of clinical data and non-public forms of data sharing, such as the unique and persistent identification systems for datasets; the data license, use or other agreements employed by the repositories; and the… - Discussion documents
Preprints
…to scout upcoming work or facilitating transfer of papers to journals, alongside the challenges such as ‘scooping’, screening, industry-wide standards and credibility of non-reviewed research. There are questions about the status of preprints in various disciplines, and the implications for submission, subsequent publication, copyright and licensing and links to peer review. - Case
Late addition of new author to article
…Institution for additional information) or disallow the addition. The editor could also suggest that an acknowledgement may be more appropriate than authorship. Some journals require each author’s contribution be identified on submission, and this could be a process the journal could put in place so that this issue does not occur in the future. But even if it not the norm for the journal to ask about… - Seminars and webinars
WCRI 2019: Preprints and their place in the publication ethics landscape
…on the ethics front, particularly in the health and medical fields where it is unclear whether open discussions on early research are beneficial toward improving the work, or whether there is potential harm in publishing unvetted and non-peer-reviewed findings. In this Monday afternoon session at WCRI, Chris Graf ( - Case
Duplicate articles due to DOI reassignment
…withdrawn and a withdrawal notice published in the Online First area; or alternatively that the Online First articles be compiled into a forthcoming issue and then stamped as withdrawn with an accompanying withdrawal notice. The journal’s editors feel that the publisher’s proposal is not in line with the intended temporary nature of the Online First space. Creating a new issue and then withdrawing… - Guidelines
Managing the relationships between society owned journals, their society, and publishers
…Resources should be provided by the society to ensure a journal maintains transparent and ethical processes. Societies should be transparent in their process for selecting third party support for the journal, such as printers or advertising support. The journal website should clearly state its ethical practices for authors and reviewers. Management of the journal and ownership… - Case
Potential peer reviewer misconduct
…provided by the author and were convincingly validated. The peer reviewer then directly contacted the colleague that validated the initial data to confirm their report without prior approval from the editor-in-chief, thereby breaching the rule of anonymity. In fact, the editor-in-chief had mentioned in an earlier mail to that particular reviewer that personal contacts or comments between reviewer… - News
COPE in 2023
…or individuals accepted for membership meet the standards that we expect. Nonetheless, during 2023, we have committed to undertaking an extensive review and evaluation of this process, including: how we assess membership applications; how we on-board new members; and how we can better support members to ensure they are following ethical practices after they have been accepted. In a constantly… - Case
Authorship issue
…felt that it was clear that relationships between Drs A and B and Dr C were poor, and a number of subsidiary points had been made in the letters. However, the journal considered that the issue revolved essentially around whether or not Drs A and B met the criteria for authorship. The journal website clearly states that the journal follows the guidelines of the International Committee of…