- News
In the news: October Digest
…for assessing scientists in June 2019, tilting the evaluation process from the number of papers published to their importance. A month later, they released standards to address various standards for misconduct such as plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, authorship and duplicate or overlapping submissions. Facilitation and Integrity FAQ
…style="text-decoration:none;">[email protected] with any other queries. COPE resources are available under a CC BY-NC-ND license, and thus the resources may be used by journals and publishers regardless of whether they are COPE members. A reference to COPE materials or COPE standards on the journal’s web pages does not, by itself, imply COPE membership. Therefore, it is…- Forum discussion topics
Editorial conflicts of interest
…about possible research, reporting, and publication biases, and their bearing on the published content. Conflicts of interest (COIs), or competing interests, are one more possible source of bias. A COI is defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) as existing “when professional judgment concerning a primary interest…may be influenced by a secondary interest".[ - News
In the news: December 2020
…present, it seems that little is likely to change from a financial perspective in this regard. In order to study the peer review process for papers being submitted to a computer science conference, a standard process for scoring and comparing scores between members of the review… - Case
Possible violation of the Helsinki Declaration on Scientific Research with Humans
…suggests that for the control group, there was an omission of a standard of care practiced by most modern medical centres that perform this procedure. The reviewer suggests these findings cannot be generalised to other procedures of this type and he wonders why the original warning criterion was not utilised in this study to further protect these patients. Furthermore, the study raises serious… - Case
Claim of plagiarism in published article
…overlapping material and whether or not any overlap constituted plagiarism of ideas (not words). The editorial board concluded, as did I, that this format is fairly standard for clinical articles; content overlap likely resulted from similar content in practice guidelines for these conditions; neither article is ‘conceptually original’; and that updates of clinical review articles are a common practice… - Case
Scientific misconduct claim from a whistleblower where the institution will not investigate
The editor informed the authors of the overall discussions at the COPE Forum, saying that they had done all they could based on COPE guidelines in terms of trying to assess the veracity of the claims (and detailed the standard COPE guidelines). The editor told the authors that he felt that at this point, further investigation into the situation had to move to their institution if they wanted… - Forum discussion topics
Ethical considerations around book publishing
…organise established knowledge on a particular topic for the purpose of education, and can be targeted at some level of student learning. Text books may or may not receive the same standard of peer review as monographs. Conference proceedings. COPE will address this topic separately at a later date. Books can be published by many different kinds of publication processes, including,… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Driving diversity, equity, and inclusion to shape the future of publication ethics
…equitable systems, considering humility, honesty, authenticity and credibility. Randy then spoke on the global growth of the American Geophysical Union, as the context for enhancing understanding of the ethical obligations of journal editors. He described some standard workflows to help reduce biases, and frameworks for managing allegations of discriminatory behaviour, all of which help individuals take… - News
In the news: January 2018 Digest
…src="/files/u7140/Transparency%20international_logo.png" style="width: 150px; height: 32px; margin: 3px; float: right;" />Meanwhile, four health integrity organisations have called for governments to ensure that patients, doctors, and scientists can access the full results of all clinical trials, as they claim that not doing so puts patients at risk - Case
Authorship issue
…felt that it was clear that relationships between Drs A and B and Dr C were poor, and a number of subsidiary points had been made in the letters. However, the journal considered that the issue revolved essentially around whether or not Drs A and B met the criteria for authorship. The journal website clearly states that the journal follows the guidelines of the International Committee of… The COPE Case Taxonomy
…the COPE European Seminar 2014)Download presentation [PDF 552kB] | Watch presentation [14:19] Publication Ethics: 16 years of COPE — Irene Hames, Charon A Pierson, Natalie E Ridgeway and Virginia Barbour(Presented at the 7th International…- Webform
COPE integrity workshop 2021
…When you register, COPE will collect your personal details so that we can process your registration for the event. 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. - News
In the news: February 2022
…="https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41073-021-00119-1">interventions to reduce spin in published articles. Paper mills The International Journal of Electrical Engineering and Education retracted 122 papers and published expressions of concern for >300 more due to concerns for manipulation of the submission and/or peer review process-likely for being - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: April 2022
…policy changes in reaction to this conflict, especially relating to the broad international commercial sales of products and services. As an organisation focused on integrity in research and its publication, COPE has reiterated our position, first published in 2013 in response to sanctions imposed against Iran, to uphold the understanding that the consideration and communication of research results… - Case
Ethical approval for retrospective study
…protocol. 4) The program was not set up as a study or research project, but as a treatment program. Hence we did not seek/obtain ethical approval for a study but rather project approval from the Ministry of Health. 5) Our analysis looked retrospectively at outcomes for a large cohort of patients treated. This was done internally as part of an audit/evaluation, so as to improve our quality of… - Case
A severe case of plagiarism?
…note any discrepancy between the raw data and the final manuscript, he will be forbidden from presenting data at all national and international meetings. • Furthermore, he will also be banned from presenting at the University Scientific Meetings. The editor was satisfied with the investigation and now considers the case closed.… - Case
Authorship dispute
…as an appendix in an internal report for their funding agency. Later, a similar paper was published by Dr A and his team (only) with similar content to the previous disputed paper in journal X. Dr B and his team are acknowledged in the text but have not been asked or listed as co-authors. The paper contains the results from Dr B’s team, very important results, that people now refer to as… - Case
A case with no independent institution to investigate
…helped in this situation. The recently published fourth criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE http://www.icmje.org/) states that if you are an author of a paper, you have a requirement to help investigate any issues with the paper. Hence author A cannot recuse himself from any association with this paper.… - Case
Inability to contact an author to obtain permission to publish
The case was submitted to the internal publications ethics committee, along with the comments from the COPE Forum. The committee were extremely supportive of publishing, and suggested that the PhD examiner of the thesis from which the paper derived should provide a letter confirming that the work was carried out as described and that there would be no conflict of interest for the author in…