- News
In the news: June 2018 Digest
…href="http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/04/11/1078-0432.CCR-18-0227" target="_blank">http://clincancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2018/04/11/1078-0432.CCR-18-0227 The XPhi Replicabilty project will seek to replicate about 40 studies in experimental philosophy to estimate the replicability in this field that has methods similar to social psychology. In… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2021: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/tara-hoke">Tara Hoke, COPE Secretary and in-house General Counsel for the American Society of Civil Engineers, who opened the session with an acknowledgement of the lack of ethnic diversity of the panel speakers, reflecting the continuing challenges the academic publishing industry is facing, and that COPE itself is making efforts to address. Despite this, the panel comprises individuals who are… - Case
Deception in submitting manuscript for publication
A manuscript was submitted to my journal. The author, on his own accord, submitted the manuscript for review to several reviewers under the guise that this was sent by me. The author sent the following explanation: “In some of our previous encounters, you have indicated that finding sufficient cooperative reviewers has been a problem for you. In order to provide you with some help in thi… - Case
Registration of a randomised control trial
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance. All journals that publish trials should have a policy on… - Case
Retraction because of scientific misconduct even if the conclusions are sound?
…The unexplained manipulation of the data makes the journal doubt the reliability of the findings despite what the institution's investigation found. They are, however, conflicted about what do to, because ICMJE guidelines say '..if the… - Event
1st COPE Asia Pacific Seminar 2011
…cases to be at the meeting, either in person or by telephone to present the case. Please submit cases directly to the administrator by 31 October 2011. The seminar is free for COPE members and $150 AUD for non-members. Non-members wishing to attend can contact the administrator for details on how to join COPE. Register here: - Event
COPE Forum: 3 August 2016
…rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Helvetica, Geneva, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 24px;">Please register for the Forum by emailing our - Case
Withdrawing from authorship
…(http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html) all authors have responsibility for the data and agree to help in any investigation: “Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work… - Case
Withdrawal of paper at proof stage
…withdraw their paper. The editor would not want to publish an article if the author wants to withdraw it. The editor has no choice but to accept the author’s decision. The Forum recommended that the journal should review their internal processes to make sure expectations are clear in their communications with authors and revise where needed. COPE’s journal auditing tool (https://publicationethics.org… - Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…aligns most closely with COPE Core Practice: Peer Review Processes, its impact is wider reaching. The explicit and implicit biases, or conscious and unconscious biases, of editors and peer reviewers could prejudice which manuscripts are reviewed or ultimately accepted for publication. As COPE member Cambridge University Press explains in their… - 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 these… - Case
“Research” without ethics committee approval
Eighteen patients with a variety of symptoms and 10 controls had various measurements taken after being given an oral glucose load. Participants also had routine blood sampling and were put on a defined diet for three days. The authors did not consider it necessary to obtain ethics committee approval, but all participating subjects signed a consent form recording their agreement to take part an… COPE webinar: Current Issues in Peer Review
…peer review surrounding preprints? How could this relate to peer review by journals? What are the main issues in peer review that are brought to COPE for advice? Is there need for further guidance? Three guest speakers will present their views given their experience in these areas, and there will be an opportunity for questions from attendees. You can- Case
Possible self-plagiarism and/or prior publication
…details of this case a grey area (COPE Discussion Document: How should editors respond to plagiarism http://publicationethics.org/files/Discussion%20document.pdf), and that copyright and rights of author issues may apply. In summary, both co-editors of the journal consider that this case constitutes self-plagiarism and… - Case
Authors referring readers to an objectionable version of an article on a preprint site
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance. This is a difficult and complicated question. If the… - Case
Suspect author
…approximately 12 years ago; it responded saying it saw no reason to investigate further. A letter, published in one of the specialty journals in 2000 by an independent researcher, asked the question “Why are author A et al’s data so nice?”, pointing out that the probability of such results occurring by chance were infinitesimally small, but as far as we know there have been no formal investigations of author… - News
Liz Wager discusses retractions in the BMJ
…-wager-trouble-with-retractions/">http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2013/07/01/liz-wager-trouble-with-retractions/) This leads into COPE's guidelines on how journals and institutions should cooperate (Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases: guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)) and how, in this case,… - Event
COPE Forum: April 2018
Open to COPE members only. Our Forum, where we discuss cases submitted by members, will take place on 30 April from 4-5.30pm (GMT). Taking part in the Forum allows members to contribute to, as well as learn from, the cases being discussed. We will also be discussing Preprints: Continuing the… - News
COPE at Wiley research seminar, Japan
Trevor Lane, COPE Council Member, gave an invited plenary talk titled “Research Publication Ethics - Best Practices for all Stakeholders” at… - Event
ISMTE European Conference 2019
Chris Graf, COPE Past co-Chair, will speak at ISMTE's European conference themed "Working together through change". The COPE session, Change and constants at COPE, will look at new ethical challenges facing journal editorial and…