- News
Editor to Editor support for Journal Management
…with a formal COPE forum that was well-received by all in attendance. Starting in the early 2000s, INANE became a true bellwether touchstone for nursing journal editors, bringing to the forefront effective approaches to meet the immense challenges of journal publishing in the digital age. Managing a scientific journal in a practice discipline such as nursing has always presented a delicate balancing… - Case
Scientific misconduct claim from a whistleblower where the institution will not investigate
…whistleblower. Institution-2 responded by saying that the authors believed there was an initial problem with the data used, but these had been updated and were not fabricated. Institution-2, however, was not the institution that carried out the experiments in question. The editors made the decision to obtain more information. On resubmission of the paper, the three original reviewers looked at the… - Research
An analysis of peer review cases brought to COPE from 1997-2016
[PDF, 100Kb - click image to download] … - Case
Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance
…several retractions involving some or all of the same authors. If innocent, the authors could readily give a satisfactory explanation. Other factors to consider in deciding how to proceed include whether a false declaration has been made on submission (eg, some journals ask all authors to confirm they had full access to all the data) as well as possible salami slicing. … - News
COPE at CSE Annual Meeting, New Orleans USA
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/daniel-kulp">Dan Kulp discussed data manipulation and related COPE resources, and Deborah Poff gave two separate talks on international authorship, and citation manipulation. For COPE resources in these areas visit our Core Practices: Authorship and… - Case
Inadequate assurance of human research ethics for a questionnaire
…possibilities of harm were the 160 individuals surveyed warned about them? How? Were they told what the data would be used for? What were they told? When you have amended the paper to give some indication and can supply a (translated) consent form, please visit the instructions to authors to complete your submission". In response to these queries the following reply was received. "We have set a cover… - Case
Two reviewer reports contain a significant amount of verbatim textual overlap
…therefore have similar ideas about what it takes to provide a good contribution in this field of research”. The other reviewer offered the following explanations: “[The other reviewer] and I have coauthored several papers … and, as a result, share many ideas about the ... literature; as a result of working together on several papers on the subject, we use the same perspective in assessing how… - News
COPE Trustee
…interview. If the number of shortlisted candidates exceeds the number of vacancies, elections will take place. Trustees shall be elected by the Constitutional Members of COPE or (if the candidates are unopposed) by approval of the Trustee Board. How to apply Please contact the COPE Administrator for more details on… - News
COPE receives top award from Council of Science Editors
COPE has been awarded CSE's highest honour for its significant contribution to improving scientific communication by promoting high editorial standards. The Meritorious Achievement award will be presented to Dr Virginia Barbour, Chair of the COPE… - Case
Plagiarism case
…well as their placement in the paper) are the same, the two figures (graphs of the data) are in the same position, and the ideas/concepts throughout are the same but paraphrased. In the journal’s opinion, the biggest cause for concern is this mirroring of structure and ideas. The journal has followed the COPE flowchart and are having difficulty deciding how to proceed. They have contacted… - News
In the news: January 2018 Digest
…Authorship In the era of Team Science, careful attention to authorship criteria is criticalhttps://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2667044 - News
In the news: November Digest
…-boost-transparency-biorxiv-begins-posting-peer-reviews-next-preprints Ten years on from their 2009 survey, Sense about Science partnered with Elsevier to survey 3000 researchers on their attitudes to peer review and to understand how these have changed over time. https://senseaboutscience.org/activities/peer-review-survey-2019/ Post-publication… - Discussion documents
Citation manipulation
…Citation manipulation is a problem when references do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article, and are included solely to increase citations. Any party which includes or requests to add citations where the motivations are merely self-promotional violates publication ethics. Penalties for citation manipulation may include removal of editors from editorial… - Case
Withdrawal of acceptance based on potentially unconsented data
…free of the use of the ethically inappropriate data. Given that the four letters were heavily based on the papers and cite data, figures, and equations, the decision was made not to publish the letters. The authors have complained that the journal has gone against COPE guidelines: "3.1 Editors should not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the… - Forum discussion topics
Best practices for guest edited collections
…collections. During this forum we would like to continue the discussion about these issues, gathering your thoughts and feedback, which COPE will use to develop official guidelines. Questions for the Forum discussion 1) What is the root problem with large amount of collections? 2) Some publication platforms are dedicated to special issues, such as conference proceedings. Do these… - Case
Concerns regarding image manipulation and inconsistent figure legends
…responses satisfactorily addressed all the issues queried and the university was asked to investigate. The university confirmed that the investigation procedure was underway but could not predict how long it would take. At the Editor-in-Chief's request, the university agreed to keep the journal informed of progress with the investigation. Despite prompting, no response had been received over 3 and a half… - Case
Institution alleges that paper includes fabricated data
…perpetrator was or the specifics of the affected data. We were therefore unable to determine how severely affected the validity of the overall paper was and whether a retraction or correction was necessary. Our initial response was to request further information from the institution and the author. Initially, we were informed by both parties that, as a result of Federal privacy laws, they were unable… - Case
An enquiry about arbitrating reviewers
…the reviewer is the one making the final decision or “arbitrating” on the acceptance of the paper. The editor can keep the author informed of the process, but does not need to give details on how many reviewers are consulted. The Forum advised that the editor should obtain consent from the reviewers to share their reports with a third reviewer. The Forum noted that there is no evidence that… - Case
Review of a book written by an editor of a journal
Two scholars and professional colleagues, A and B, serve as co-editors of a peer-reviewed international journal. Editor A, who recently had a book published, has requested that editor B solicit a review of the book from a scholar in the field. Editor A would like this review to be published in the journal that they edit together. Editor B is concerned that this situation would put him in…