- Case
Requesting authorship after publication
To support a recommendation to publish a correction listing Dr H in an acknowledgment (not as an author), the editors sent the institution the following post from Retraction Watch, which describes a similar situation. The institution agreed with this… Job vacancy: COPE content writer
…Council. The successful candidate should also be detail oriented and committed to meeting tight deadlines. Preference will be given to those with a strong writing portfolio and relevant work experience. This is a freelance role of up to 15 hours per month. Pay = £30 per hour. COPE is a virtual organisation and the role is based from home. Most meetings are conducted virtually but expenses will be…- Case
Author disagreement regarding article corrections
We received an original article which was accepted and published. The article was written by multiple authors from several centres, and the corresponding author undertook the task of standardising the content, making several corrections to the original text. The author proofs were sent to the corresponding author, who reviewed them. However, once published, one of the co-authors indicate… - Case
Reviewer citation manipulation
This is a general scenario which has been observed in increasing numbers at our journal. We are finding that some reviewers provide a referee’s report which include a request to cite a number of papers, which on closer inspection are all authored by the referee. We would like to hear whether Forum participants have any policies or procedures for reviewers who are clearly manipulating cit… - Case
Editor adding reference to an author's work
Several years ago Author A was asked by Editor B to contribute an essay to a publication. The book took a long time to complete and underwent many modifications. When the book was published Author A noticed that several edits had been made to the text without Author A being informed and which Author A did not approve. The most notable edit is an added reference to a piece of text. The added ref… - News
Research integrity and how to buy a Persian carpet: TOP Guidelines, part 2
…research is communicated, like perhaps preprint servers and data repositories) to display, so research readers can check the knot count, fibre, and colour and then build-upon a piece of work. For you, now, the draft article from that TOP workshop is ready. We share it here with… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar 2018: Creating and implementing data research policies
…Guidelines is not to mandate for data access per se, but to mandate disclosure of data availability, and, if available, to require persistent identifier/s and applicable licence information. The guidelines ask for certain TOP Statements to be provided in journals, as explained in a - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: December 2020
…href="https://publicationethics.org/events/cope-forum-tuesday-15-december-2020">predatory publishing and asks ‘where do we go from here?’. We moved our COPE case workshops online with two very successful peer review sessions, and held a webinar on ‘Understanding text recycling’, with speakers from the Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP). COPE representatives have been involved in… - Webform
COPE peer review workshop 2020
Registration is now closed as the workshop is full Peer review workshop Thursday 24 September 2020, 4.00pm - 5.15pm (BST), online workshop (COPE Members only) This year's Peer Review Week is dedicated to 'Trust in peer review'. Peer Review… Expenses policy
…- reasonable costs for meals and refreshments will be reimbursed. A reasonable level is classed as no more than £15 for lunch and £30 for dinner. When using a private car the allowable rates per mile are: 45p per mile up to 150 miles in one trip; 25p per mile over 150 miles in one trip. Parking fees and tolls are reimbursed where applicable. Fines incurred as a result of driving or parking…- Case
Duplicate submission, overlap of papers, and a referenced paper that was not in press
A paper was submitted that reported a randomised controlled trial of a treatment for a blood disorder in a group of children. Better psychomotor development was achieved in the treated group. This paper went through considerable revisions, which were requested by the editorial committee, and a revised version was finally submitted a year later. But the revised version now included a new referen… - Case
Possibly unethical report on the safety and efficacy of a minor operation
Two companion papers from a single author, a paediatric surgeon working in a secondary/tertiary unit, were received. He had performed the same minor operation on 420 babies and 60 children over two years. His paper purported to report safety and efficacy. From the hanging committee’s own knowledge, and after checking with a surgical board member, a paediatric surgeon might be expected to do fou… - Case
An accusation of racism
An article on the community based diagnosis of a common disease was submitted. The journal had never received a paper from this particular country before. The diagnostic test used in the study is known to have a low sensitivity and is not the accepted gold standard. The editors felt that as the author was a senior academic, it was likely that his/her institution would be one of the few in the c… - Case
Duplicate submission
We received a manuscript for consideration. The manuscript was assigned to one of our section editors who sent it for review. Subsequently, the editor-in-chief received an invitation from another journal to review the same paper. The editor-in-chief recognised the paper straightaway, declined the invitation to review and alerted the editor-in-chief of the second journal of the duplicate submiss… - Case
Peer reviewer contacted by author
In a single anonymous peer review process, a reviewer gave an author detailed suggestions about improvements in the statistical analysis. The author was asked to revise and resubmit the paper to address these and other reviewers' suggestions. The author, unaware of the reviewer’s identity, subsequently approached the reviewer as a respected colleague at a professional meeting to discuss the man… - Case
Suspicious responses to authorship change requests
A journal received a request for multiple changes to the authorship list after the manuscript was accepted. Originally, there were five co-authors. After acceptance, the journal received the following requests from author A, the corresponding author and co-first author: remove one of the co-authors (author D), add a new co-author (author E), reorder the list of authors, and change the designate… - Case
Data integrity issues
…information. The author responded to the second request stating that the original data for the studies had been destroyed/was not accessible because only hard copies were available in patients‘ files and on an old computer. Standards in record keeping require authors to keep data for 15 years. The journal published an expression of concern for both articles, stating that concerns regarding the… - Event
COPE Forum: September 2023
…23-15 Reviewer citation manipulation 23-16 Request for retraction due to alleged ethical misconduct in a grant application 23-17 - Seminars and webinars
Introduction to publication ethics and the COPE ethics toolkit
…class="resource-download-inline__container"> Presentation Introduction to publication ethics and the COPE ethics toolkit PDF 15 MB … - News
Post-publication conflicts of interest
…write a company commissioned review. Case 15-15: After publication of an article, a manager at the authors’ institution who was in contact with the funding agency demanded corrections and then withdrew the demand. COPE Forum noted that both employer and funder clearly had conflicts of interest and…