- 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
In the news: July 2020
…(>5,000 on medRxiv) without peer review, with major concerns raised about misinformation. AI to identify concerning COVID-19 preprints Joseph DeBruin, the Head of Product Management at ResearchGate describe the speed of publication and uncertainty in science as two sides of the same… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/EQiDw7dFigg?rel=0" title="YouTube video player" width="560">?rel=0"> The session was moderated by Nancy Chescheir. Nancy introduced the speakers and moderated the question and answer segment. Back to top - 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… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: January 2020
…scholarly work in medical journals” Also, for our North American colleagues, we want to let you know that this year’s North American seminar will be held in Columbus, Ohio, 15 June 2020. Mark your calendars. Details will be forthcoming soon. It is going to be an exciting first year of the new decade and we look forward to working with you to make it a great year for publication ethics. Best… - Case
Plagiarism in a case report
I received a phone call from the first Author (A) of a case report published in our journal in 2005, who informed us that he had received a letter from an Author (B) of a research letter which had been published in another journal in 2000, stating that 12–15 sentences from the research letter had been copied in the case report. Having compared the papers, about… - Case
Inadequate reporting of a trial, despite earlier rejection from a different journal
We have been contacted by a reviewer after he spotted a paper he had reviewed for us (journal 1) now published in a second journal (journal 2). Both journals are members of COPE. The reviewer had advised we reject the paper when it was sent to him to review in September 2008. This was based on his assessment of the paper and also the supplementary material he was sent by us: protocol, CONSORT s… - Case
Change in author’s name after publication
…publications are traced back to this unique identifier. On a show of hands, the majority (15) of the Forum said they would not change the name and 10 said they would.… - Case
Author disagreement blocks submission
A paper was submitted to a medical journal reporting original research on human subjects. Two corresponding authors, author A (first in authors’ list) and author B (last in the list) were listed. The paper was sent to external referees but while it was under review, the editor received an email from author A stating that s/he had not read the paper, was not aware of the submission and did not a…