- Case
Unusually frequent submission of articles by a single author
…letters. In the remaining one he is a co-author. The articles are on very diverse subjects. This set us thinking that, apart from his clinical work and studies, how he had time to conduct research, analyse the results and write the articles. The journal first wrote to Mr X for the necessary justification. He responded promptly, “I am one of the best researchers of my country and have… - News
In the news: June 2021
…ethics and integrity breaches in research. This study explores what virtues mean in scientific practice, and the role they can take in Ethics and Research Integrity Training. Another study analysed the… Terms and conditions
…having a policy for disclosing conflicts of interest (competing interests), including study funding having clear statements on ethical research standards and practices, such as approval for and ethical conduct of human and animal research, and informed consent and confidentiality in human research having a reporting process for claims of breaches of ethical standards having…- Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Trustworthy AI for the future of publishing
…trustworthy AI: respect for human autonomy prevention of harm fairness explicability The Group has seven key requirements to guide the realisation and application of trustworthy AI, which call for an active awareness of human agency, technical robustness and safety, privacy and data governance, transparency, diversity and non-discriminatory practices, societal… - News
Case discussion: critiques after publication
…institution to investigate. Case Discussion This COPE Forum case is categorised under two COPE Core Practices: Allegations of misconduct: “Journals should have a clearly described process for handling allegations, however they are brought to the journal's or publisher’s attention. Journals must take seriously allegations of… - Case
Handling self-admissions of fraud
In November 2014, the first author of a decade old paper in our journal and a 15-year-old paper from another journal informed us that he faked the data in two figure panels in the paper in our journal and one figure panel in the paper in the other journal. The main gist of the manipulation was loading unequal amounts or delayed loading of gel lanes. Self-admission of data falsification i… - Forum discussion topics
Ethical considerations around watchlists
March 2024 Ethical considerations of using and maintaining watchlists Watch the introduction to "Ethical considerations of using and maintaining watchlists" with Dan Kulp: Resources and further reading
…Education (ICME-2013), 2-6 October 2013, Balaclava, MauritiusKusal Das, International Advisory Group 2nd International Scientific Practical Conference "World-class scientific journal: problems, solutions, preparation and inclusion into citation indices and reference databases", 24-26 September 2013 and Innovative…Text Recycling: Forum discussion topic March 2013
…guidelines [3]. How far back should this be applied? Attitudes towards text recycling have changed over the past decade. Editors should consider this when deciding how to deal with individual cases of text recycling in published articles. Editors should judge each case in line with accepted practice at the time of publication. In general, where overlap does not involve duplication of…- Case
Request for a retraction of a retraction
…also ruled that it was wrong for the main author to have been dismissed (I understand that he got his job back). One court ruled that signing other people’s signatures was “according to ongoing practice”, an act that caused “no harm”. One court ruled that “there is no regulation that requires the permission of an ethical board”. One court ruled that the fact that not all the case files could… - Forum discussion topics
Editing of reviewer comments
…the reviewer first, to work with them and see if they can change their review to something more appropriate. If the reviewer is not willing to do so, the editor might explain to them why their review is not appropriate and acceptable practice. If a journal has a policy, it is then easy to reach out to reviewers and explain why their comments are problematic. Reviewers may not always be aware that… - News
In the news: February 2018 Digest
…href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/27/technology/social-media-bots.html" target="_blank">http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/concordatonopenresearchdata-pdf/ the draft principles for aligning research data management requirements included: 1. Open access to research data is an enabler of high quality research, a facilitator of innovation and safeguards good research practice.2. There are sound reasons why the openness of research data may need… - Forum discussion topics
Author behavioural misconduct
…silencing voices, affecting research quality, and skewing who gets credit. Caution must be used in determining what is deemed as behavioural misconduct, for example, where practices are illegal in some countries but accepted in others. Even a criminal conviction in one setting may not be indicative of behaviour which is thought of as misconduct elsewhere, for example concerning homosexuality or… - News
In the news: April 2020
…target="_blank">https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/581892v2 Open Science/Open Humanities Just over 60 of about 400 mostly European research funders responding to a 2019 survey of their policies regarding open science and how they reward and incentivise their researchers to adopt open practices. While in general, the agencies and organisations favour greater openness, the extent of which they have operationalised this… - News
In the news: October 2018 Digest
…reviewers reflective of the readers and contributors to the journal? Beneficence: Do the journal processes promote rapid decision-making for authors so they can submit elsewhere if the paper is not accepted? Are the editors and editorial board members committed to publishing high quality work to advance the science, practice, concepts and mission of the journal? Non-malfeasance: Journal… COPE Privacy notice
…will always refer you to their privacy policies, which will detail how they will process your data. If you wish to exercise your rights, please contact COPE, who is the data controller. For online events where you do not wish to disclose your identity to other attendees, we recommend that you familiarise yourself with the platform and their privacy notice, to understand how you can best…- Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…topic. Back to top Questions for discussion 1) Is it an acceptable, and ethical, practice for an author to use AI to write a scholarly article? 2) Can we detect whether an article has been written by AI? Is it important to do so? If so, why? 3) Can an article written by an AI trained on existing articles be considered original? 4) What… - News
In the news: September 2018 Digest
…arial,<br /> #PeerReviewWeek18<br /> <br /><a data-cke-saved-href=" submit="" successful="" target="_blank" that="" the="" they="" to="" twitter="" twitter.com="" ty="" uptake="" versus="" view="" when="" with="">Measuring openness: is the best way of incentivising open scholarship to measure it? - News
In the news: February Digest
…climate is seen differently by academics with different ranks and fields. The authors conclude that leaders in the humanities and social sciences should set fairer expectations and that senior scientist should socialize junior researchers into research integrity practices and that a climate that does not tolerate suspicion among colleagues should be developed.