- 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… - Seminars and webinars
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship
…investigations, and legal issues faced by an editor attempting to resolve a dispute prior to publishing a paper. Read more on this panel discussion… - Case
Handling conflicts of interest between authors and academic editors
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. COPE Council applauded the journal’s comprehensive COI… - Case
Compromised peer review system in published papers
On noticing a high volume of submissions from corresponding author A, editor X flagged up concerns with the preferred reviewers being suggested and their comments. Author A had in most cases suggested the same preferred reviewers for each submission, preferred reviewer accounts had non-attributable email addresses, comments were being returned very quickly (within 24 hours) and were often brief… - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…href="https://publicationethics.org/resources/research/paper-mills-research">Paper mills research report, COPE & STM, 2022 Systematic manipulation of the publication process, COPE guidance updated 2022 Potential “paper mills” and what to do about them – a publisher’s… - Case
Image manipulation as a general practice
…permission). On a poll of the Forum, less than half of the delegates said that they screen for image manipulation. COPE has an eLearning module on image manipulation. Also, Mike Rosner has written extensively on this topic (Journal of Cell Biology 2004;166:11–15 http://jcb.rupress.org/content/166/1/11.full)… - Case
Suspicion that signed informed consent forms are forged
…what assurances do the editors have about the integrity of the remainder of the paper? COPE’s flowchart on dealing with ethical problems in a submitted manuscript suggests that the journal contact the institution where the research was done in order to get their help in appraising… - Event
5th World Conference on Research Integrity
…University, USA) proposal for a system of self-retraction for honest error and the issues involved. Various view points from different stakeholders will be discussed. Speakers are: Richard Mann (University of Leeds, UK), Ivan Oransky (Retraction Watch) and Ginny Barbour (Chair, COPE). If you are attending the WCRI, these sessions are open to all delegates. - News
COPE workshop August 2019: Santiago, Chile
…Associate professor of Universidad de Santiago de Chile) and Iria del Río (editor of Revista Española de Cardiología). The workshop was a success with an attendance of over 40 editors from Chile and other South American countries. There was strong interest in publication ethics and a real need for education and discussion. The forum will be repeated next year… - Event
COPE Forum: Tuesday 23 March 2021
…followed by discussion and advice among attendees on members' cases submitted in advance. #C0PEForum Forum agenda and minutes 1. Update on COPE activities by the Chair 2. Forum discussion: ethical considerations around book publishing 3. New cases … - News
In the news: February 2018 Digest
…Requirements" at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Pyn_Hr5_DgYMF7ncyFWjsNjcjtPdnW8GYSEqXvmF9co/edit … which was still active as of February 7, 2018. Based heavily on the “Concordat on Open Research Data”, RCUK, 28th July 2016, - Case
Dual submission
…one that have occurred over the past 12 months. Once again, this case was spotted by chance. The editor feels that there must be many more examples of duplicate publication that get through, especially when they go to different journals. How can editors prevent these cases, rather than trying to catch them in a net with many holes in it? Is the answer to take stronger action against those that are… - Case
Accusation of non-attribution of authorship
In 2008, our journal published a specific series, and an author offered to write short introductions to a series of summaries of the management of various medical problems. One of the articles used a summary written by the complainant, who was fully acknowledged in the table accompanying the article written by his colleagues, but not included as an author. Two years after publication, he compla… - Case
Anonymity versus author transparency
An editor invited an author to submit a paper to his journal. Colleagues of the author suggested “unsubmission” because it could be damaging to the author’s career. The editor contacted the publisher and requested that the paper be withdrawn. The editor then contacted the author asking if he would consider publishing the paper anonymously (ie, with no identifying names). The editor did not cons… - Case
Plagiarism of a PhD thesis
We received a complaint from an author claiming that her PhD thesis had been plagiarized in a journal article. After many discussions, the editorial office decided that the authors should resolve this issue among themselves, as it was an author dispute.After further correspondence, the editorial office is now also saying that because the thesis is not published anywhere, there is no need… - Case
Is there a time limit for submitting a critique of a published article?
…commentary on the article. If retracting the article, the journal might wish to refer to the COPE Retraction Guidelines. If an author is obstructive or unresponsive, the journal can still take the appropriate action. The Forum advised that the editor should treat the letter or commentary separate from what they do about the article… - Forum discussion topics
Artificial intelligence (AI) and fake papers
…pre-peer review checks (e.g., language quality, confirming that a submission is in scope for the journal) or as part of peer review (e.g., identifying reviewers, checking for data or image manipulation). See COPE’s discussion document on AI in decision making and COPE’s seminar on - Case
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
…action to be decided. As the paper was only recently (12 August) rejected by journal A, it has yet to hear back from author X, if indeed it does at all. Journal A feels that it is important that journals B, C and D are made aware of the issues in the papers they have published. However, they also feel that it is important that they are made aware of all of the papers involved so they can… - Case
Advice regarding a weird type of content and its authorship
Our company publishes clinical pathways. They were initially authored by local experts, but have since been retrofitted with evidence, if possible. This was done by expert “evidologists”, not clinical experts; they were acknowledged solely by their company name (it was “out-sourced”). If the evidence did not fit, the pathway was discarded. We undertake to review all of the pathways…