- Case
Allegations related to multiple papers and journals
COPE typically advises that cases should be handled and judged individually. A new submission should not automatically be dismissed from being peer reviewed, but the editor may wish to consider additional precautions in its review. One suggestion is to ask the author to provide all of the raw data or any underlying images. The journal may wish to do additional statistical analysis to see… - Case
Does co-publication of an editorial constitute duplicate publication?
…editorial. Transparent notification of the simultaneous and duplicate publication in each article is key, as well as the texts being identical. The main problems with duplicate publication (and the attendant harms) are: the risk of misleading an audience; the risk of duplicate counting of the same patient data in subsequent systematic reviews/meta-analyses, with the attendant harm of… - Case
Duplicate publication in a predatory journal
…article taken down, but have asked the editor to proceed with their journal’s usual review processes. The journal would not normally consider or publish a paper already published elsewhere but have not encountered this situation where a predatory journal has published something against an author's will (and presumably without any quality control, peer review, etc). It is possible that the… - Case
Author admits failure to credit other authors
An author submitted a manuscript and stated that he was the sole author. The manuscript received a favourable peer review and eventually was accepted. Some time after the article was published, a co-author told the author to contact the journal to correct the author list. The author of record (AOR) did this and supplied co-author names to the journal. The editor worked with the author… - Case
Ethics approval for survey design
…the organisational policy or government regulation that clearly exempted the research protocol from ethics review. The revised submission included an English translation of portions of the IRB approval that documented there were two review dates; both occurred after the initial manuscript was submitted to the journal and the initial “revise” decision was sent to the author. It is unclear if… - Case
Data source for study of questionable integrity and provenance
A journal recently handled a research paper related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper was deemed of interest and sent for external peer review. Because it accrued reasonably positive reviews it was scheduled for discussion at one of the weekly manuscript meetings where research editors and a statistician make final decisions on a number of papers. A few days before the meeting, it… - Case
Comments linked to retracted papers
…a particular paper, and one that is about a wider topic and is more like a mini review. They may accompany a paper or might be standalone and in a different issue. How the commentary relates to the published paper (eg, extent or message, sentiment, purpose) would matter. If the commentary is only about the now retracted paper and is mostly positive about its contribution to the field and its practical… - Case
Request for addition of new authors
…unethical to add a coauthor at the proofreading stage. COPE has a flowchart specifically for requests prior to article publication. All authors must agree to add new authors (which is true at any stage in the peer review process), and this has to be documented and explained. … - Translated resources
Webinar 2020: research and publishing ethics challenges and best practices
…of Excellence in Academic Publishing webinars, as part of their joint training program for Chinese researchers, reviewers and journal editors. Dr Trevor Lane, COPE Council member introduced the trend, challenges and best practices in research and publishing ethics. Trevor also led a live discussion with the audience on selected COPE cases. What are the issues? Dr Lane… - Case
Withdrawal of acceptance based on potentially unconsented data
…be provided with the specific details of the ethically inappropriate data. The investigation also identified a small number of methodological errors, which have also been mentioned in the retraction notices. During the investigation, four separate letters based on the two articles were submitted, peer reviewed and accepted. They were not published immediately and were placed on hold while… - Case
Unable to contact authors
A manuscript was submitted to a journal and after the review and revision process, the submitted manuscript was accepted for publication. During the manuscript revision process, the corresponding author was in contact with the journal: answered all of the emails, performed revisions of the manuscript, prepared answers to the comments of the reviewers, etc. When the manuscript was… - Case
Editor as author
…addressed if the editor-in-chief submitted this article to the journal. Questions for COPE Council Would the co-author need to disclose that they are also the patient referred to in the article? Would it be better to have open peer review for this manuscript to ensure full transparency of the review process? Would it be ethically safer to have the… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2020: Understanding text recycling
…practical dimensions— our work currently is focused on helping sort out things in STEM fields and to develop useful guidelines and policy documents there. 5. For systematic reviews and meta-analyses it is inevitable that in order to describe the studies in the reviews, we have to describe verbatim the approach used in the analysis. This is important where the research design, methods of… - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…is not necessarily a sign of a paper mill submission but if there are other red flags, it can be useful. Some additional features have been added. The original features for the tool were to protect against reviewer fraud and a report would only be issued after peer review. A new setting (low, medium, high) can raise an alert if there is a high rate of submission from the same device. Would it be… - Seminars and webinars
ISMTE webinar 2020: Transparency in the Publishing Process
…/guidelines-new/principles-transparency-and-best-practice-scholarly-publishing">Principles of Transparency & Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing - Systematic Manipulation of the Publication Process - - Case
Simultaneous submission without aiming at duplicate publication
…Y indicated that he wanted to remove the article from journal A and publish it elsewhere. The editor of journal B sent the review for peer review. Two months later, the editor of journal A contacted author X as the deadline to submit the third revision to journal A was approaching. Author X accepted an extension to submit offered by the editor of journal A. One day before the deadline, the authors… - Forum discussion topics
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here?
…was discussed at the COPE Forum on Tuesday 15 December 2020. Questions for the Forum Should COPE use its criteria for membership as an instrument to evaluate standards of scholarly publishing vehicles for the purpose of informing authors, peer reviewers, readers, scholars invited to serve on editorial boards, and universities evaluating scholarly productivity? … - Case
Plagiarism versus questionable research writing practice
…relying on the percentage match. The decision on how to proceed will depend on the level and nature of the copying, evidence that this was done knowingly, and any evidence of attempts to conceal this. Plagiarism detection software can be run at various points in the review process and the editor should consider doing it prior to manuscript acceptance to avoid other potential issues, such… - Seminars and webinars
ISMTE webinar 2020: Citation games
…reviewers and editors, and citation rings, citation manipulation undermines research integrity. Can we treat all citations as equal, such as those to articles in predatory journals, retracted or corrected articles, and non-peer reviewed content? Citation games: mocking research (PDF) Related resources - Case
Conflicting authorship in a collaboration
…X an opportunity for a reply is a fair way to air the scientific debate before the readership. The journal should now ask Researcher Y to revise their comment to comply with the points raised by the reviewer (ie, to depersonalise it and focus on the science and its methods). The journal should follow its normal process and send the revised comment and also any revised reply in response to its…