- Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
…hospitals. An educational intervention was then conducted at each site, attempting to address medical, nursing and pharmacy issues, and utilising a number of tools, including one-on-one ‘academic detailing’, presentations and posters. A follow-up audit (same as the baseline) was then conducted at each institution. A manuscript was submitted to our journal describing the conduct and outcome of the… - Case
An ambiguous plagiarism case
…some or all of the thesis, as that might indicate the actual research was outsourced and confirm that the helper was an author of the derivative paper, but again the institution can help investigate. If the lead author of the paper in A ends up as an author in the paper in B, then this seems to be a combination of redundant publication and publishing without the knowledge and permission of… - Event
15th EASE General Assembly and Conference
…/">Registration is open, with discounts for EASE members. Optional workshops being run as satellite events in the week after the main conference: Course 1: Improving journal quality and impact: working with authors In partnership with PSP Consulting,… - Case
Randomised controlled trial without ethics committee approval
…technically more successful in one or other of the patient positions, and whether there was any patient preference. It is a clinically relevant question, and the study produced an apparently useful and meaningful result. The paper reported that the patients consented verbally to random assignment, but as the clinical reviewer pointed out, there was no mention of ethical approval. The authors were asked… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
…to the co-authors’ head of institution as they seemed to have taken complimentary authorship. - The journal should retract the article if it felt that there was sufficient evidence to suggest fraud; but if not, it should certainly publish a notice of concern.… - Case
Failure to ask permission
The Forum unanimously agreed that the authors’ actions were unethical. Failure to ask permission is a form of misconduct. Some argued that it would be reasonable to sue for breach of copyright and that the author should contact his publisher and international distributor. The Forum agreed that this is a form of plagiarism but that there are degrees of plagiarism so the question arises as to… - Case
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
…reviews, both of which said "reject" so that was the decision in the end, as confirmed by the associate editor. The editor tries to get three reviewers for each paper, but routinely rejects on two high confidence ones.… - Case
Victim of article theft wants correction to list their name, not retraction
…to publisher B. We contacted publisher B who confirmed the details of the submission to them by author A in 2017. Author B is listed publicly as a reviewer for publisher B's journal, but publisher B could not confirm that they had direct access to this particular submission. Author B said their PhD advisor, now apparently deceased, had given them the article but they recently had doubts that… - Case
Withdrawal of paper at proof stage
…typeset article for proof reading. The corresponding author contacted us stating that they wished to withdraw their submission, two weeks after we sent their paper for proof reading. As the chief editor, I immediately sent a message to the corresponding author and requested an explanation. The articles have been edited by one format editor, three peer reviewers, one manuscript editor, one copy… - Case
How to deal with obvious but disclosed conflict of interest
…likely to be published otherwise. If we do publish, the editor would ask the authors to not only disclose in the proper COI declaration page but also in the discussion section of the paper as a ‘limitation’. Questions for COPE Council Is this the correct course of action? Is the disclosure of COI sufficient? What is the standard for publication by corporate… - Discussion documents
Sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct
…EiCs should follow the same guidelines when sharing information regarding possible misconduct in a submitted (but as yet unpublished) manuscript and a published article COPE welcomes feedback from publishers, journal editors, reviewers, researchers, institutions, librarians, funders, and other stakeholders on this subject. Add your feedback below. Related resource - Guidelines
Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers
…manuscript submissions to journals, but can also include reviews for other platforms and apply to public commenting that can occur pre- or post-publication. Reviews of other materials such as preprints, grants, books, conference proceeding submissions, registered reports (preregistered protocols), or data will have a similar underlying ethical framework, but the process will vary depending on the… - Case
Allegation of authorship misconduct
…alleged plagiarism of ideas or method. The approach the journal should take therefore devolves on two issues: first the evidence for ‘theft’; and second, the nature of any prior contact between the two author/author groups which could explain how the ideas could have been accessed. On the first point, it does not appear as though any definite proof has been found to support theft of notes… - Guidelines
Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases
…journals/publishers about any findings that relate to the reliability or attribution of published work that may arise during a research integrity or misconduct investigation respond to journals if they request information about issues, such as disputed authorship, misleading reporting, competing interests, or other factors, including honest errors, that could affect the reliability of published work… - News
WCRI 2019: Preprints and their place in the publishing ethics landscape
…was presented by Howard Browman (COPE and 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… History and context of the COPE guidelines
…Guidelines on Good Publication Practice in 1999 COPE's first guidelines were developed by Philip Fulford, Michael Doherty, Jane Smith, Richard Smith, Fiona Godlee, Peter Wilmshurst, Richard Horton and Michael Farthing, after discussion at the COPE meeting in April 1999. These were published as Guidelines on Good Publication…- Case
Deception in submitting manuscript for publication
…this area, I have invented an ad hoc entity, ‘Nominated Reviewer Referral Service’, under which aegis ‘blind’ emails were sent to an assortment of academics and journalists, advising them that they had been ‘nominated’ to provide a brief review and evaluation of the paper, which I attached. I did not identify myself as the author or give any kind of a ‘sales pitch’, nor did I try to give the… - Discussion documents
Citation manipulation
The COPE citation manipulation discussion document defines the key issues and existing solutions around unethical citation practices. COPE welcomes comments which add to this ongoing debate. Manipulative citation is characterised by behaviours intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, such as: excessive self-citation of an authors’ own work, excessive citation to the… - Flowcharts
Authorship and contributorship of unpublished data: dealing with concerns
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised regarding authorship or contributorship of a dataset, before publication. The flowchart provides data publishers, such as a journal or data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle the concerns. - Flowcharts
Authorship and contributorship of published data: dealing with concerns
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised regarding authorship or contributorship of research data, after publication. The flowchart provides data publishers, such as a journal or data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle the concerns.