- Case
Competing interests question
The chair commented that the post-publication literature evaluation services do raise some very interesting and new issues not encountered in paper journals. The majority view of the committee seemed to be that there was a clear and unacceptable conflict of interest and some argued that the evaluation should not have been published. However, the committee advised that it might have been useful… - Discussion documents
Responding to anonymous whistleblowers, January 2013
…via the use of anti-plagiarism software. Other emails have alleged figure manipulation. The pattern of the cases is not clear; they range across many different types of journals and publishers; cases may be very old or more recent. Whistle blowers may copy COPE council or staff on the emails. A link to the readout from software is sometimes provided; often information is only provided for abstracts.… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair and Vice-Chair
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/susan-garfinkel">Susan Garfinkel and Mark Hooper whose knowledge and experience of university and research institute research integrity will be invaluable. Susan, a COPE Trustee, is currently the Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at the Ohio State University, US. Mark Hooper, a Council member, is the Manager of Research… - Flowcharts
Inappropriate image manipulation in a published article
…="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/image-manipulation-published-article-cope-flowchart.pdf" target="_blank">Inappropriate image manipulation in a published article PDF 155 KB Key points Decisions on what action to take will be influenced by whether manipulation of the images has an effect on… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: October 2019
…Council and Trustees. Our second strategic plan is now being drafted. For those who follow and participate in COPE activities, it will not surprise you to hear that part of our going forward commitment will be to continue to build upon interdisciplinarity and to work on University membership in the coming years. Our strategic plan will cover the timeframe from 2020-2023. You will hear more about this as… Become a member
…sufficiently transparent about their business practices and authors in particular may be unable to judge the legitimacy of these journals. Together with Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) we have…- News
Welcome new COPE members April-June 2019
Welcome to our new members who have joined COPE between April and June 2019. The new members have been assessed against criteria outlined in the Principles of Transparency and signing up to COPE shows that they intend to follow the highest standards of publication ethics and to apply COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the - Webform
Journal membership application form
…1 year before they can apply for membership Applicants must agree to apply the COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the Core Practices. Only complete forms will be considered How applications are assessed: The - News
COPE Officers 2019-2021
…years and we're pleased they will be with us for another year. Charon Pierson has come to the end of her time with COPE, having joined COPE Council in 2012 followed by two terms as COPE Secretary. We owe a huge thanks to Charon for her contribution to COPE, in developing guidance and writing commentary for Digest newsletter, presenting at seminars and workshops as well as regularly chairing the… - Event
COPE Forum: March 2023
…%3ESubmit%20a%20case%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%3Cp%3EThe%20deadline%20to%20submit%20a%20case%20for%20this%20Forum%26nbsp%3Bis%3A%20Thursday%2024%20November%202022.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%2D%2D%3E--> Forum agenda On Thursday 23 March 2023 the COPE Forum will be held at 15:00-16:30pm (GMT / UTC) 1. Update on COPE activities Update on COPE activities by the Chair. - Case
Habitual plagiarist
The Forum agreed that this appears to be a clearcut case of plagiarism. The editor should retract the article. The Forum advised the editor to consult COPE’s retraction guidelines, which are published on the COPE website. The editor should state in the retraction notice the reason for the retraction. The Forum also advised the editor to follow the COPE flowchart on “Suspected plagiarism in… - Case
Victim of article theft wants correction to list their name, not retraction
…preparation of the article for publication (submitting, revising, etc) and the author(s) who stole the paper may have made changes to the paper. The editor may wish to direct the author to their authorship criteria and peer review process to explain why transferring authorship is not appropriate. To prevent theft of a paper, one idea put forward was for the DOI to be reserved in advance, with the… - Guidelines
Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers
Peer review guidelines provide basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer review process in research publication. Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer-review process, but too often come to the role without any guidance and unaware of their ethical obligations. These guidelines are intended to be applied across… COPE webinar: Understanding text recycling
…="http://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars-and-webinars/european-seminar-2019-text-recycling-research-project">they presented at COPE's European Seminar in 2019. “I've been ‘iThenticating’ all revised papers for several years now, and am continually frustrated by self-plagiarism… You’d think that researcher/authors with MDs and PhDs would be bright enough to know how to reword.” Managing editor of a medical journal- Case
Allegation of reviewer malpractice
The Editor provided a signed declaration stating the journal’s practice of asking authors to suggest reviewer(s) who may or may not be used for that purpose. The Editor’s declaration stated that the reviewer in question was nominated by the authors and that no competing interest was declared by either the authors or the reviewer.… - Discussion documents
Citation manipulation
…roles, or removal or rejection of journals from citation indexes. Journals should develop policies and standards to determine self-citation thresholds, provide educational resources to support best practice and establish procedures to respond to potential misconduct. There may be instances where self-citation and requests for citations are legitimate … - Flowcharts
Authorship and contributorship of unpublished data: dealing with concerns
… This flowchart has been developed by the FORCE11 and COPE Research Data Publishing Working Group. Key points Concerns may relate to a change in author order or other authorship and contributorship issues. Where agreement cannot be reached, consider contacting the… - Flowcharts
Authorship and contributorship of published data: dealing with concerns
… This flowchart has been developed by the FORCE11 and COPE Research Data Publishing Working Group. Key points Concerns may relate to a change in author order, or other dataset contributor or authorship issues. Where agreement cannot be reached, consider contacting the… - Flowcharts
Concerns about risk in unpublished data
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised about a dataset that may be harmful or breach privacy. The flowchart offers data publishers, such as a journal or a data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle these concerns. - Flowcharts
Concerns about risk in published data
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised about published data that may be harmful or breach privacy. The flowchart offers data publishers, such as a journal or a data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle these concerns.