- Case
Authorship dispute involving a commercial institution
A paper was published in a journal. After publication, an associate editor of the journal said that they and other colleagues should have been authors on the paper. They cited a patent they helped write that overlapped with the article as proof that they should be authors on the paper. The authors of the paper refuse to add the associate editor and colleagues as authors. Unfortuna… - News
Artificial intelligence and authorship
…href="https://publicationethics.org/copeforum">Forum where there is doubt over the originality or authenticity of images. Such tools may be of particular importance in detecting paper mill activity. Except that experience already shows that ChatGPT doesn’t always give the same… Membership subscription fees
…£45,396 1751 to 2000 £41,414 1501 to 1750 £37,167 1251 to 1500 £33,451 1001 to 1250 £29,203 751 to 1000 £24,424 501 to 750 £19,911 251 to 500 £13,805 101 to 250 £8,495 …- Case
Reviewer misconduct?
We have received threats of legal action from the authors of a manuscript rejected by our journal, henceforth referred to as journal A. These “aggrieved” authors claim that their manuscript was unfairly reviewed by a close competitor, who then used some of their findings in a paper subsequently published in journal B, without either attribution or citation. The “accused” scientist had in… - Case
Ethical concerns and the validity of documentation supplied by the authors
We became concerned that not all of the co-authors were aware of a research paper submitted to our journal due to the difficulty receiving responses from the email addresses that had been supplied and their nature, given that the authors all worked in a hospital/academic institution. Despite repeated requests and attempts we remained dissatisfied with the responses and did not feel certain that… Press
…href="https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author">Authorship and AI tools COPE has released a position statement on Authorship and AI tools. COPE considers that AI tools, such as ChatGPT, cannot be listed as author of a paper, and their use must be fully transparent. 13 February 2023 Revised principles of…- Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…Cooperation and Liaison between Universities and Editors (CLUE) guidelines Time on recording : 02:15-13:25 Dr Sabine Kleinert discussed the problems publishers have liaising with institutions when investigating potential misconduct, and the different perspectives of publishers and institutions. Sabine went on to share the - News
Vacancies on COPE Council
…is welcomed Sufficient time to commit to COPE activities, including attending meetings and contributing to the work of Council as required (usually 1-3 hours per week depending on activity at the time). … COPE webinar: Diversity, equity and inclusion
…Diversity, equity and inclusion in scholarly research and publishing Friday 28 May 2021, 13:00-14:30 (British Summer Time) (UTC + 1) Find out what time this is in your country Thanks to everyone who attended the webinar. The- Case
Case of figure duplication and manipulation involving two journals
The editors in chief of journal A and journal B, both owned by society C, received a letter from the last ‘senior’ author, also the corresponding author on one of the papers (author D), concerning separate papers published in both journals (paper E published in journal A and paper F published in journal B), informing them that one of the co-authors on both papers is under investigation for scie… - Case
Author requests permission to publish review comments
An author submitted a Forum manuscript critiquing an article published in the journal six years previously. The Forum manuscript was reviewed by three reviewers who all recommended rejection, and was evaluated by an associate editor and a senior editor, who rejected the manuscript on the grounds that the reviewers were unconvinced by the critique and felt that it did not really advance the subj… - News
In the news: June Digest
…. https://www.wiley.com/network/journaleditors/latest-content/better-peer-review" target="_blank">https://www.wiley.com/network/journaleditors/latest-content/better-peer-review Post publication peer review of PLOS articles is unusual-occurring for only 7.4% papers and it has been declining. About 1/3 of such comments are procedural (like copy editing comments) and of the remaining, only about 1/2 discuss the content of the paper. The authors note that if post… - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
…nominating/selecting members for its peer reviewer pool (25%) …has diversity policies for selecting peer reviewers when evaluating individual manuscripts/applications (26%) …provides in-house training to promote diversity and inclusion in peer review (13%) …provides training to potential peer reviewers, to promote diversity in its peer review pool (14%) • Additional… - News
In the news: July 2020
…misconduct Stock Photo Paper Mill: Elisabeth Bik has looked into papers which contain images from the same library of about 100 photos and plots, suggesting they were all created from the same paper mill. This from the Wall Street Journal: "Internationally peer-reviewed… - Case
Duplicate publication
Sixteen randomly chosen papers were examined from a PubMed search of 370 publications between 1995–2000 by the same author. Two papers were virtually identical, differing only in the form of the introductory paragraph and the list of authors. Neither publication acknowledges the other. Another paper reported a “second ever published case”, and two subsequent papers reported the same “second” ca… - Case
Omitted author
A case series of 89 patients with a relatively rare condition was accepted for publication by the journal following due process through the peer-review system. The paper was published online within days of being accepted. A few days later the editor of the journal received an email from a professor (Professor X) from the same country from which the paper was submitted to say that one of the cas… - Case
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
Regarding a submitted (but not yet accepted) paper from a scientific collaboration, one of the authors has asked whether an instance of academic misconduct or - for that matter - any non-scientific but rather unsavoury personal facts or accusations (e.g. a penal or civil proceedings) can be considered as a valid ground for requesting that the journal remove an author from the paper, as per the… - News
In the news: September 2018 Digest
…data-cke-saved-href=" submit="" successful="" target="_blank" that="" the="" they="" to="" twitter="" twitter.com="" ty="" uptake="" versus="" view="" when="" with="">Creating a culture of diversity and inclusion in scholarly publishing… The COPE Case Taxonomy
…Congress on Peer Review and Biomedical Publication, 8–10 September 2013, Chicago, USA)Download presentation [PDF 552kb] Classifications are in capitals, keywords in lowercase, descriptions in italics. AUTHORSHIP(Involves any aspect of…- News
Data and reproducibility: The role of research institutions
…Research Associate, Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Canada