COPE Membership Handbook
…COPE members COPE members are part of a community that is helping to create a future where ethical practice in scholarly publication is the cultural norm. The COPE Membership Handbook is a guide, for new and existing members of COPE, to the benefits of being a COPE member, how to make the most of membership, and how to uphold the highest ethical standards in research publishing.- Event
COPE Forum: September 2022
…cases. Submit a case to COPE Forum Do you have a publication ethics case you'd like to bring to the COPE Forum for discussion and advice? Submit a case The deadline to submit a case for this Forum is: Tuesday 13 September 2022. Forum agenda On 27 September 2022 the COPE Forum will be held at 16:00-17:30pm (BST… - Case
Not getting consent from an ethics committee
…· Agreement that this was a blatant experiment on children. · The parents had given permission for the administration of the diet but had been informed that this was a trial, which was felt to be sloppy conduct rather than intentional avoidance of ethical approval. - Case
Author trap/fabrication detection
…should have considered handling the matter himself rather than passing it on to another journal. The chair of COPE agreed to contact the editor of the UK journal to determine if the issue of data fabrication is being investigated by them.… - Case
Retraction of article from 1994
…group of patients from a paper already published and a selected group of patients from professor A’s hospital that had not given consent to be part of a research project. Professor A has claimed that his patients were not part of a research project, since the treatment he gave them was available to all at that time. Both cases were handled by the national board of research misconduct at the time (in… - Flowcharts
Undisclosed conflict of interest in a submitted manuscript
…provide them with a copy of their conflicts of interest policy. The journal should obtain a signed or confirmed conflicts of interest statement clarifying the author’s position before proceeding further with review. The author's institution should be involved when the author denies an alleged conflict of interest or to inform an institution in cases of suspected misconduct.… - News
Text Recycling Research Project: update March 2021
…Author guidelines: This short document lays out fundamental principles and best practices for text recycling, with links to a more extensive document for those wanting a deeper understanding. Educational documents: These will present relevant definitions, discuss why text recycling can be valuable in some situations but problematic or illegal in others, and explain why some commonly suggested… FORUM DISCUSSION TOPIC: comments please
…part of a PhD or other academic thesis which has been published according to the requirements of the institution awarding the qualification." American Chemical Society “Publishing policies” http://pubs.acs.org/page/policy/prior/index.html (varies by journal on attitude to theses as prior publication). This will be…- Event
COPE Forum: July 2023
…will be held at 12:00-13:30pm (BST / UTC+1) 1. Update on COPE activities Update on COPE activities by the Chair. 2. Forum discussion topic We begin the COPE Forum with a discussion on the topic of Best practices for guest edited collections. - Case
Developing novel approaches to improve the assessment of absolute risk among patients with cardiovascular disease
…proofs so that they could be compared with the original sent to Journal B. Under the circumstances, and following further discussion, the editors agreed they should pull both papers from publication and wrote to the senior author to inform him of this decision.… - Case
Palestinian refugee conditions
- There was no evidence of political bias, but it might have been possible to take a more careful approach, with more extensive peer review given the strong political context. - Medicine does not exist in a political vacuum and these issues need to be discussed and published.… - Case
Allegation of fraudulent publication
…B in 2001 was almost an exact copy of an article published in Journal C in 1990. The Editor of Journal A examined copies of the articles from Journals B and C and concluded that this appeared to be a case of plagiarism. How should the Editor of Journal A act in this situation, given that Journal A is not the victim of the alleged plagiarism and that Journal C has ceased… - Seminars and webinars
WCRI 2019: Preprints and their place in the publication ethics landscape
…href="http://www.imr.no/" target="_blank">Austevoll Research Station), including the potential harm of non-peer-reviewed work being accepted as fact. Following the presentations there was a lively discussion with the panel and the audience, spanning the range of views on preprint ethics. - Case
Where should journals escalate serious concerns about an institution or institutional review board?
A publisher received a submission to one of their journals that raised ethical concerns. The concerns were related to potential harm or undue risk for participants who may be vulnerable. The publisher reviewed the ethics approval statement, and the authors had met the journal’s policy requirements by prospectively obtaining ethics approval from their institution before beginning the… - Case
Handling undisclosed peer reviewer conflict
…during the peer review process on whether they had any conflicts of interest related to the research. The editor confirmed the reviewer had a valid email address. Question for the Forum What process should be undertaken when a peer reviewer does not disclose their relationships with a company, provides a suspicious review, and at the same time, where the authors (who… - Event
COPE Forum: December 2023
…Forum is: Tuesday 21 November 2023. --> Forum agenda On Tuesday 5 December 2023 the COPE Forum will be held at 10:00-11:30 (GMT / UTC) 1. Update on COPE activities Update on COPE activities by the Chair. 2. Forum discussion topic: Claiming affiliations We begin the COPE Forum with a discussion on - Case
Potential peer reviewer misconduct
…and author are considered inappropriate. Questions for COPE Council How serious is the misconduct of the reviewer? What action should be taken? … - News
Guest article: Research misconduct
…headlines there is renewed interest in the causes and consequences of research misconduct. Research misconduct wastes time and money, contaminates the published scientific record, hinders scientific advancement and ultimately risks harming us all as consumers of research. What is the true extent of research misconduct, and should we be concerned? Is research misconduct on the increase, or are we… - Seminars and webinars
Inclusive language: policing or progressive?
…they also often take place in journals which are behind paywalls and so are not widely accessible. It is through usage that words evoke reality, not via rules imposed by others. The best way forward would be to collaborate via our national academies to assess attitudes to language in an inclusive way. Promoting cultural change Lisa Richardson begins her talk by acknowledging the… - News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…by an editor attempting to resolve a dispute prior to publishing a paper. From the institutional perspective there is a need for clear definitions and criteria of authorship at the institutional level, governed by national codes of ethical conduct, for a research integrity officer to effectively investigate a complaint. A clear process and procedure must also be followed, and all involved…