- Case
Alleged plagiarism
…different authors and were not the sole provenance of that author. Although it is true that employers may have vested interests, this does not necessarily mean they are corrupt. The notion of conscious plagiarism implies that the plagiarism is intentional; unconscious plagiarism is unintentional. It is the former that attracts sanction, and the intention must be proven. The point of requesting an internal… - Case
Retrospective trial registration
…and delivery. The data in the new manuscript were gathered from 2000 to 2002 and is from the same study population. On submission of the manuscript we enquired about a trial registration number and the authors indicated that the trial had not been registered. Their interpretation of the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) statement is that this trial does not need a number… - Case
Clear case of duplicate publication?
…discussion. They were unable to admit and see that this is a clear case of double publication. We told them this was a serious violation of international rules for publication ethics. We also told them that it was unacceptable to include three new authors this time. The authors admitted to having done all this, but were very offended by our response. I told them I would consult COPE to obtain an… - Case
Are copyrighted conference audiotapes considered "prior publication"?
…example, journals can decide to publish papers arising out of a dissertation or an audit that has been circulated internally in an institution, but they should be transparent and disclose previous publication or copyright of any portion of the material. One view from the Forum was that copyright issues support paternalistic ideas of protecting people from something that has not been peer reviewed, and… - News
In the news: October-November 2021
…16px;">Authorship and contributorship In order to understand gender differences in authorship practices, the authors of a recent study published in Science Advances surveyed more than 5500 scientists internationally to understand experiences with authorship naming and ordering. They found that more than half of the respondents had… - News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute - university perspective comment
…editorial office to comply with core practices urges the concurrent development of comprehensive guidelines for authors and of internal processes to verify compliance with those guidelines. Without adequate enforcement, well developed policies will not be of any use in preventing future disputes. Problems arising with an article prior to publication can be handled by holding that article until the… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2022: Managing paper mills
…19:05-33.20 Sarah Elaine Eaton, COPE Council Member, and Editor of the International Journal of Education Integrity, explained the parallels between student contract cheating and paper mills, and how some of what we know about contact cheating can be transferred to our understanding of paper mills.There has been around 15 years of… - News
Research integrity and how to buy a Persian carpet: TOP Guidelines, part 2
…changing). “Promoting an open research culture,” published by Brian Nosek and colleagues in Science back in 2015, presents the well-known TOP guidelines. TOP describes how to aim for research transparency in eight standards and three levels. It’s - News
Letter from COPE: June 2020
…href="http://publicationethics.org/news/letter-cope-chair-april-2020">issue of Digest: 'Editors should stay true to their editorial policies, maintain high standards while being aware of their public health responsibilities. Peer review quality and transparency remain as important as ever. If a journal editor decides that usual procedures need to be amended temporarily, this should be declared in any affected manuscripts as an editorial note.' This year we… - Case
What involvement should a journal have in a dispute about an article published in the journal?
Our journal published a manuscript as part of an editors’ forum which, as an invited forum paper, received reviewer feedback but did not follow our usual double-blind peer review standard for regular submissions (the reviewers were aware of the author’s identity but the author did not know the identity of the reviewers). Following the publication of this article, the editor-in-chief… - Case
Coauthor fails to respond to request to confirm coauthorship
…the standard of authorship is named in the acknowledgements. However, because we also require anyone named in the acknowledgements to give their permission for this, we decided that if this person did not respond, we would ask the authors to acknowledge the person's involvement by referring to their job title—for example, “The authors acknowledge the assistance of a medical student in the early… - Case
Plagiarism versus questionable research writing practice
…there was a difference in length of almost 2000 words, so that a greater proportion of Dr A’s paper matched Dr B’s paper. Furthermore, a large number of similarities were generated by tables (which showed standard measures of the effectiveness of treatment), and there is no intellectual property in the format of a table. Questions for COPE Council Is this still… - Webform
COPE peer review workshop 2020
…location according to our data policy. COPE will not share your details with anyone else. Read our full privacy policy. Parts of the event will be recorded for internal purposes to help us plan future workshops. Please use the form below to indicate your consent.… - Webform
COPE peer review workshop, November 2020
…in a secure location according to our data policy. COPE will not share your details with anyone else. Read our full privacy policy. Parts of the event will be recorded for internal purposes to help us plan future workshops. Please use the form below to indicate your consent.… - Event
COPE webinar: managing paper mills
…strategy. Renee Hoch Managing Editor leading the PLOS Publication Ethics team Sarah Elaine Eaton An associate professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, Sarah Elaine Eaton PhD is the editor-in-chief of the International Journal for Educational Integrity. Her research expertise is centered on ethics and… - Case
Prolific authors
…qualify for authorship under the ICMJE guidelines for each article. It has been shown that some infamous cases of fraud were by prolific authors ("High annual publication rates had characterised many of the international research misconduct cases, which had begun to come to light in the mid-1970s" http://www.bmj.com/ cgi/reprint/331/7511/281.pdf; Lock S,… - Case
Repeated alleged plagiarism in case reports
…offenders such as this should be “outed” to the international medical publishing community by name. I have available copies of his submissions and the papers from which I believe he has copied. I would question the ethics of not making this information widely known and am prepared to share them with the Forum or any individual editor. I have asked myself whether or not I should write to the other… - Case
Advice regarding a weird type of content and its authorship
…will operate no minimum threshold for their involvement, although we will probably reserve the right to reject the offerings of those who have been pants. All “authors” will be called “contributors”, if we need a name for them at all, so as to avoid any conflict with the definition of authorship provided by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Taking such an approach will… - Case
Author anonymity at the final proofreading stages
…should be transparent about their processes and the breach of the double blind process, and ensure their internal processes are secure so that the identities of the reviewers are not revealed to the authors.… - Case
Request for retraction due to alleged ethical misconduct in a grant application
…does not consider that the issue has any effect on the results of the published manuscript, and it is not at risk of endangering anyone utilising the results, negating the need for urgent retraction by the journal. The journal is also concerned about retracting an article that has multiple authors from multiple international institutions. Questions for the Forum What…