- Case
Unauthorised reviewer challenges
…reviewing. More broadly, the journal is advised to ensure that their expectations of reviewer behaviour are communicated very clearly to all potential reviewers. Examples were provided to the Forum of additional practices utilised by other journals. These included specific agreements sent to each new reviewer, and on-boarding materials which they are required to read or watch before they undertake their… - Discussion documents
Authorship
The COPE authorship discussion document introduces issues and aims to stimulate discussion around authorship. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate. Authorship can refer to individuals or groups that create an idea or develop the publication that disseminates that intellectual or creative work; however, appropriately acknowledging roles and contributions is not always a… - News
Open retractions data: podcast
…challenges due to varying publisher practices. On the journalism side how do you select which cases to report in Retraction Watch given that retractions could be either misconduct or honest mistake? Retraction Watch will continue with their independent journalism, separate from the database acquisition. The selection process for reporting on retractions has evolved due to the significant… - Case
Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication
…this paper had been published with an incomplete author list and that they wanted the paper retracted as they had not been included. After discussions with the editors of the journal, a corrigendum was agreed as the best way forward to amend the author list, as there was nothing scientifically wrong with the paper. In the course of the conversations with E1, it became clear that R1 was… - Case
What extent of plagiarism demands a retraction versus correction?
…origin of the idea for the approach. The team’s interpretation of the COPE Retraction Guidelines was that this is a partial duplication (thereby treating the grey literature as part of the 'scientific literature' – see question 4 below) and, given that the article adds testing of the method and hence the proof-of-concept, that readers are best served with a correction. It seemed that a retraction, as… - Case
Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute
The Forum noted that there are two issues here: the name change and the erratum notice being clearly indicated. If the decision is made to remove the author, there is the issue of eligibility of authorship. Did the author qualify for authorship? Should he be included in the authorship list? Hence the Forum agreed that the editor cannot resolve this issue and it is best to refer the matter to… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: June 2018
…src="/files/u7140/Geri%20Pearson_headshot_Digest.jpg" style="width: 90px; height: 125px; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px; float: left;" /> Read COPE Digest newsletter for more advice and resources to support your ethical oversight policies and procedures, the case of the month 'Ethics of non-active management of a control group',… - Case
Service evaluation as research in a controversial area of medicine
…suggested the editor may wish to consult the SQUIRE 2.0 (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence) guidelines on how to publish quality improvement studies, which can be found on the Equator Network website (https://www.equator-network.org/reporting-guidelines/squire/).… - News
WCRI 2019: Transparency 2025 panel
…they access to adequate infrastructure to implement their DMP? Ensuring that open access data is not misused - move towards a governed access model (e.g. Scottish Public Benefit Panel). Rewarding people for good data management practice – credit in applications, other rewards? Getting public buy-in on decisions about data to drive policy and regulatory change.… - Case
A lost author and a new hypothesis
A paper was published in January 1998,and seven authors were credited. B was thanked for his contribution in the acknowledgements section. One year later B wrote to the editor, outlining two alleged incidents related to this paper. First, the cohort reported in the January 1998 paper was one that B had been working on since the early 1990s. In 1992–3 he sought collaboration with another researc… - Case
Compromised peer review system in published papers
…that the journal should take some responsibility for failure of their peer review system. Good practice is always to check the names, addresses and email contacts of reviewers, and especially those that are recommended by authors. Editors should never use only the preferred reviewer.… - Case
Authors’ contributions and involvement by medical communications company
The editorial office was contacted by someone who indicated that s/he has been working with a medical communications company on several manuscripts and has become concerned about the minimal extent of the authors’ contributions to manuscripts handled by the company. The work requested by the company goes beyond language editing, and involves developing parts of manuscripts into narrative on the… - Case
Institutional investigation of authorship dispute
We received a claim that several authors were removed from an article published in one of our journals before the article was submitted. None of those said to have been removed were acknowledged. The claimant requested retraction. They said the article was previously submitted to other journals, listing them as an author. They provided what they said was an earlier version of the article… - Case
Unethical withdrawal after acceptance to maximize the 'impact factor'?
…agreed that such behaviour is deplorable and a waste of editorial resources, the advice was to communicate this message clearly to the authors but not necessarily to directly punish them. This is especially applicable to more junior authors. A suggestion was to write an editorial on this issue in general, explaining why it is not good practice. Another suggestion was to review the journal… - Case
Duplicate submission and authorship dispute
A case report was submitted to our journal (journal X) in February and accepted for publication in September that same year. In late September, the first author on the manuscript contacted us to inform us that this exact case report had just been published in another journal (journal Y) by some of his colleagues, including some of the authors of our manuscript. In the initial submission to our… - Case
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D… - News
In the news: February Digest
…href="https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1111/theo.12188 The Russian Academy of Science appointed a commission to address unethical publication practices in Russia. A report from the commission released in January 2020 was described as a "bombshell" leading to retraction of more than 800 papers, published in primarily Russian-language journals. Problems with plagiarism, text-recycling,… - 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
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
…a repeat or ‘follow-up’ audit to monitor changes in practice. DUE methodology was used for a recent national quality improvement activity overseen across approximately 60 hospitals by an independent organisation funded by the government to promote quality use of medicines. Participating hospital ‘project teams’ were asked to identify a predefined number of patients from their surgical lists for the… - 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…