- Case
Possible violation of the Helsinki Declaration on Scientific Research with Humans
A manuscript underwent peer review and the resulting reviewer comments raised grave concerns about the ethical legitimacy of the study.The reviewer: questioned the authors’ impartiality, suggesting that there was an undeclared conflict of interest; raised serious concerns about the extent to which participants gave informed consent; strongly doubted that the… - Case
Suspected image manipulation involving four journals
Editorial office staff at journal A noticed possible image manipulation in two figures of a new paper submitted by author X. These suspected manipulations involved images of gels which appeared to contain multiple duplicated bands. This prompted editorial staff to look at the submission history of author X to journal A in more detail. It was found that author X had previously submitted t… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Introduction to publication ethics
…10px; float: left; width: 90px; height: 90px;" />Simon Linacre is Director of International Marketing & Development at Cabells having previously spent 15 years at Emerald Publishing, where he had direct experience in journal acquisitions, open access and business development. Simon is an ALPSP tutor, currently leading courses… - Case
Call for retraction of a commentary
A journal received two emails from different individuals, both critical of a commentary published in the journal. One cited serious errors, the other noted inaccurate statements, incorrect literature citations and fundamental flaws regarding misinterpretations or over-interpretations which could affect public health. The second email also cited the potential for the commentary to be used for (u… - News
Case discussion: gift authorship
…href="https://www.jclinepi.com/article/S0895-4356(20)30591-6/fulltext#">Sengül Gülen et al (Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2020) found were positively associated with gift authorship in collaborative work. In that survey of 666 first-authors of Cochrane reviews published between October 2016 and December 2018, 41% of authors reported the existence of gift authorship in their reviews and 15% were… - News
In the news: June Digest
…publication peer review is to become more prevalent and more focused on content, academic culture will have to change. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/05/15/guest-post-a-study-of-commenting-on-plos-articles/ Open access Trying to understand the shifting… - Forum discussion topics
Ethical considerations around watchlists
…that all parties consult legal counsel for individual cases. COPE is exploring the need for guidance on ethical issues surrounding watchlists and welcomes comments on this topic. Resources and further reading
…India, 9 December 2013Kusal Das, International Advisory Group COPE/IAMJE Seminar, New Delhi, India, 15 November 2013Charlotte Haug, Vice Chair COPE International Conference on Medical…- News
Case discussion: Suspected plagiarism
…a cut-off value of 15% to be useful. Well trained editorial and publishing staff could monitor trends in submissions for specific journals to make a good guideline for efficient plagiarism checking. If the editor believes that there was no malicious intent on the part of the authors, an educational approach may be appropriate (e.g., junior researchers, students, first-time authors). The editors… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Authorship for sale
…the paper mills webinar, 14:00pm - 15:30pm (BST / UTC +1) on Tuesday 20 September Useful links Systematic manipulation of the publication process, COPE guidance, updated 2022 - News
In the news: October-November 2021
…approached as a meta-category with a variety of meanings, but generally referring to "decolonised nations roughly south of the old colonial centers of power". Preprints The Scholarly Kitchen reposted a 2017 article as "Revisiting: When is a preprint server not a preprint… - Seminars and webinars
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…Cooperation and Liaison between Universities and Editors (CLUE) guidelines Time on recording : 02:15-13:25 Dr Sabine Kleinert discussed the problems publishers have liaising with institutions when investigating potential misconduct, and the different perspectives of publishers and institutions. Sabine went on to share the - News
In the news: February 2018 Digest
…January 15, 2018 that stated that “the systematic replication of other researchers’ work should be a normal part of science." The academy called for funding agencies, researchers, and research institutions to work together to facilitate replication studies. With this statement, the Netherlands joins other international efforts, including in the US and Great Britain, calling for ways to improve… - News
Case discussion: Editor manipulation of impact factor
…The Forum noted that Clarivate Analytics takes action against journals for citation manipulation. However, because up to 15% of citations are allowed to be journal self-citations, editors could purposefully promote journal self-citation without exceeding that level. A link to the Citation Manipulation section of a Council of Science Editors white paper was provided ( - News
In the news: April 2020
…="https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/what-researchers-think-about-the-culture-they-work-in.pdf" target="_blank">https://wellcome.ac.uk/sites/default/files/what-researchers-think-about-the-culture-they-work-in.pdf An analysis of >2,000 published retractions show that about 15% were by the authors themselves. Even with adequate notices, 91% of retracted articles did not comply with COPE recommendations for retraction transparency and content. - News
In the news: August 2018 Digest
…one group of authors in Science showed that 1/5 respondents were coerced into adding citations and findings were similar in a study of PLOS ONE authors. The specter of citation cartels among participating journals—you scratch my back, I’ll cite your paper. The author of this post suggests that an automated algorithm, similar to what is used by the US Securities and Exchange Commission to detect… - News
Case discussion: self-plagiarism and suspected salami publishing
…should not rely solely on a certain cut-off percentage score (as advised in COPE Forum cases 15-16 profusion of copied text passages and - News
Artificial intelligence in the news
…how AI can interact with other unethical practices like paper mills and authorship for sale. It is possible that AI tools will actually lower the incidence of some of… - Forum discussion topics
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via “paper mills”
…for 15 years at Stanford University and two years in industry before becoming a science integrity volunteer and consultant in 2019. Her work with her team in scanning the biomedical literature for images and other data concerns has been instrumental in detecting paper mill activity. Paper Mills are becoming a real problem. There are likely thousands of these papers and our team has… - News
In the news: February Digest
…-babies-show-need-for-more-specific-rules/ Plan S A review of the current (as of Jan 3,2019) world status on endorsement of Plan S, documents that as of now, <4% of global research articles published in 2017 were payed for by the first 15 funders to back Plan S. However, as more funders join, the more pressure there will be to flip from paywall subscription model to an open access model. China now, the country that contributes…