Common editorial dilemmas: hypothetical cases
…this was not research, just an extension of clinical practice. The nub of the issue was the consent form, which the journal requested, but on receipt found it to be "hopelessly inadequate." For this reason, the ethics committee chairman was criticised by the investigation. This case took three years because the NHS had reorganised in the interim, and ethics…- Case
Unethical withdrawal of a paper
…author is allowed to present his case. Otherwise sanctions can be seen to be unfair and could provoke litigation. All agreed that the best sanction is to decline publication of the paper. If the editor feels he would like to take it further, then he could contact the author’s institution and request an investigation.… - News
In the news: May Digest
…recent release of A Faster Path to an Open Future, in response to Plan S. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/05/08/another-response-to-coalition-s/ Peer review A recent preprint on BioArxiv looking at the practice of ECRs ghostwriting peer… - News
Guest editorial: the challenge of AI chatbots for journal editors
…href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/06/technology/google-bard-ai-chatbot.html">Google is already engaged in this process. Academic publishers and editors, with the help of bodies such as COPE, need to start a big conversation about how we are going to react to the use of chatbots…SOON! Roger Watson, Editor-in-Chief, Nurse Education in Practice Gregor Štiglic, Associate Editor, AI in Medicine Conflict of interest: the authors declare… - Case
Authorship issue related to misleading action of one author
Our journal received a manuscript which was a report of an evaluation and enhancement of an online clinical decision support system (CDS) for a specific population at risk of a disease. The online CDS had been developed by a national agency with a mission to support health promotion and disease prevention activities. Evaluation of the CDS was supported through contracts and sub-contracts. The f… - Case
Disputed change in authorship
…The article was published accordingly. Shortly after publication, author D contacted the editor accusing the journal of unethical practices. Author D also said that the Dean who had provided the letter from the ASRB had some personal differences with author D and that this influenced their actions. Author D sent their grievances in writing, asking the journal to retract the article as… - Event
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…policies to support and promote ethical research practices. Previously, Susan served as the Director for the Division of Investigative Oversight (DIO), in the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI), responsible for the oversight of national and international research misconduct matters. Other positions include Director of Research Grants for a non-profit organisation and a Program Officer at the National… - Flowcharts
All Flowcharts
…COPE Flowcharts COPE flowcharts offer a step by step process, for practical use on handling different aspects of publication ethics issues. Allegations of misconduct Reviewer suspected to have appropriated an author’s ideas or data… - News
New COPE members Jan-March 2019
…ethics outlined in the Core Practices. Journals Accounting and Financial Control (Business Perspectives) ACS Materials Letters (American Chemical Society) - News
Artificial intelligence in the news
…href="https://huggingface.co/bigscience/bloom">Bloom and others of their ilk offer new potential for people to subvert ethical practices. Since the modus operandi of such tools is to return text that is probabilistically plausible as opposed to correct, irresponsible use (for example not checking facts and citations for actual veracity or accuracy) can seed incorrect or misleading information in the scholarly… Outcomes of editors' attempts to investigate research misconduct
…Fraud, fabrication and falsification comprised 15 cases of which two were still open. In a couple of cases, the editor found an appalling track record, and discovered that the author had already been suspended or struck off from clinical practice. In one case, the journal had simply rejected the article and imposed no sanctions. In one case, the journal published its…- News
Reflections on the COPE North American Seminar 2019
…(AHSS). Two panel sessions covered 1) an overview of the issues involved in inclusivity and diversity and 2) the challenges and suggested solutions for scholarly communications with 6 speakers and a lot of time for discussion and audience participation. Following lunch, the participants participated in an interactive workshop discussing up to 6 challenging cases of misconduct or questionable practices… - News
In the news: May 2021
…target="_blank">Joint Position Statement on medical publications, preprints and peer review. They make a number of recommendations with the aim of providing “practical and implementable suggestions to uphold data integrity and quality, and the transparency of medical publications”. A key recommendation concerns the citation of preprints, which they suggest should not be used as references in any medical… Code of conduct for COPE meetings and events
…href="https://publicationethics.org/privacy">COPE’s privacy policy for how COPE protects your data. Participants should respect any specific meeting rules, eg. Chatham House rules. For online meetings and events, participants should observe good practice, such as muting microphones when not speaking to minimise unnecessary noise. If using video,…- News
Paper mills in the news
…href="https://publicationethics.org/node/55256">Paper mills research report. Editors, join us for a webinar in September when invited speakers will share their experience on how to manage paper mills. Related resources Practical steps for managing paper mills, COPE Webinar, 20 September 2022 - Case
Inappropriate authorship on students paper
A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study which was a final year student's project was submitted as an original article to our journal on 30 April 2011. On initial review it was obvious that it was conducted by students and written by them, but the list of authors had the supervisor as the first author, followed by 13 students. The supervisor, who was also the corresponding author, wa… - Case
Authorship dispute
A manuscript was published by journal X and submitted by author A (last author). Author B claims that fraud occurred in relation to authorship for the following reasons. (1) Author A did not take part in producing the data for the paper and has never been a co-author on any version of the manuscript.(2) A paper with very similar content ,which was part of the PhD thesis of author C… - Case
Possible violation of the Helsinki Declaration on Scientific Research with Humans
…suggests that for the control group, there was an omission of a standard of care practiced by most modern medical centres that perform this procedure. The reviewer suggests these findings cannot be generalised to other procedures of this type and he wonders why the original warning criterion was not utilised in this study to further protect these patients. Furthermore, the study raises serious… - Case
Misattributed authorship and unauthorized use of data
The director of a research laboratory contacted our journal regarding an article published earlier this year. The director claimed that the documents and data used in the article were collected at his research laboratory and used by author A without his knowledge and permission. At the time, author A was a visiting scholar at the director's laboratory. The director also claimed that auth… - Case
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
…other editors but in a neutral manner, without accusations or blame. The COPE guidelines "Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct" (http://publicationethics.org/files/Sharing%20_of_Information_Among_EiCs_...) provides practical guidance on this…