- Case
Ethics and consent in research
…consent procedures in the trial. Specifically, workers never provided informed consent that their tests, mandated by a company medical monitoring program, be used in any “research” study. His concerns were in four areas. (1) The researchers failed to inform both the company and the injured workers that they should have been removed from further exposures when their test results showed severe… - News
Authorship and Contributorship focus: an editor view and research institution view
…Two perspectives COPE Education Subcommittee focus—what does it mean to be an author? COPE’s Core practice #2 on authorship and contributorship recommends that members… - News
Peer review focus
…peer review process must be “transparently described and well managed”. Journals must have policies in place for the process, conflicts of interest, appeals by authors and other disputes. Journal leadership must make sure that editors and reviewers are knowledgeable of journal polices regarding the process. One of the key documents that COPE revised in… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: March 2020
…good practice to edit peer review comments. This was the topic of the COPE Forum on 6 March. There will be a summary of the discussion on our website shortly but it was interesting to hear participants expressing opinions that they would consider editing comments that they found unethical, inappropriate, or hostile. We would like to hear your views on an editor's ability to alter the contents of… - News
Letter from the COPE Vice-Chair: May 2020
…regions of the world and resurfacing in others, the preparation and submission of manuscripts for publication can be compromised by broken chains of communication and non-responsiveness of coauthors. In light of these challenges, the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals have proposed a modification of the ICMJE - Case
Duplicate publication
Author X contacted the editor of Journal A to enquire whether the journal would be interested in a review of a new concept in the treatment of a disease, written by author X and two co-authors. Author X said that his co-authors had suggested writing the paper for another journal but he had convinced them to submit the paper to Journal A. The editor invited submission and, after peer review,… - Case
Claim from an author that his name should not have been included as author on a paper
…publication) claiming that he was not consulted about the paper and did not want to be a coauthor. We then removed the article from our website and from the upcoming print issue, pending resolution of the protest. We wrote to the corresponding author (Dr R) asking for an explanation, which she provided. The gist of the explanation was that Dr M objected to publication as a means of retribution, for… - Case
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
…to which he sent a two line reply asking as to what should be done. We suggested that the copyright of the article is still with us so he should remove the article from the journal’s website until the article is withdrawn in the correct manner. The editor has not taken any steps and the article is still displayed on the other journal’s website. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Membership subscription fees
…a discrete journal product published in intervals will be charged according to the number of articles that they publish a year. If a company wishes to register fewer than five journals then cumulative journal by frequency of publication rates apply. Number of articles Fees per…- Seminars and webinars
Introduction to publication ethics and the COPE ethics toolkit
…100%; } .embedtool .fluid-vids {position: initial !important} /*-->*/ /*-->*/ Back to… - 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… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2020
…around language, politics and expertise in peer review that appear to be particularly germane to the Humanities and Social Sciences. The responsibilities editors have in mediating communications was addressed in our survey Editing of reviewer… - 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
…This will be discussed at the start of the next COPE Forum on Monday 30 April 2018. Please do leave any comments below, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting Comments are reviewed and, on approval, added below. Please login as a member of- 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… - 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…