Press
…transparency and best practice released 15 September 2022 The fourth edition of the Principles represents a collective effort between the four organisations to align the principles with today’s scholarly publishing landscape. Guidance is provided on the information that should be made available on websites, peer review, access, author fees and publication ethics. The…- Case
Institutional investigation of authorship dispute
We received a claim that several authors were removed from an article published in one of our journals before the article was submitted. None of those said to have been removed were acknowledged. The claimant requested retraction. They said the article was previously submitted to other journals, listing them as an author. They provided what they said was an earlier version of the article… - Case
Seven plagiarized manuscripts in one month by the same corresponding author
In one month we have received 11 manuscripts (9 case reports, 1 original study and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country. The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author (author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D… - Guidelines
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
…organisations that have collaborated to identify principles of transparency and best practice for scholarly publications. This is the fourth version of a work in progress (published 15 September 2022). We encourage its wide dissemination. Principles of Transparency and Best Practice… - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
Diversity in Peer Review The theme of this year’s Peer Review Week (10-15 September 2018) was diversity and inclusion in peer review. To understand more about how the COPE community views this topic, the COPE Member Services Subcommittee launched a 3-week online Peer Review… Revised principles of transparency and best practice released
…Press release 15 September 2022 Revised Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing have been released by four key scholarly publishing organisations today. These guiding principles are intended as a foundation for best…- Case
Authorship dispute
In April 2014, our journal received a case report from author A with co-authors B, C, D and E. After undergoing a first round of revisions pertaining only to the paper’s format, author A excluded co-authors C, D, and E from the revised version and retained co-author B, without notifying the journal of this change. After this change, the manuscript underwent the complete evaluation process, comp… - Case
Paper published without permission or acknowledgement from institution
An author affiliated with a research institution R published two papers as a single author, one of them in a journal of publisher A. After publication, publisher A was contacted by the research integrity officer of institution R with a letter of concern. The letter stated that the research institution has conducted a formal investigation and concluded that the author failed to acknowled… - News
In the news: April 2018 Digest
…is useless; (ii) many posted preprints may have been peer reviewed and rejected prior to posting on a preprint server—after perhaps responding to the original peer review process; the peer review process may have prevented flawed articles from being printed—or on preprint servers COPE webinar: Understanding text recycling
…Understanding text recycling Friday 7 August 2020, 16:00-17:15pm (BST) Registration is now closed for this event COPE is hosting a webinar on text recycling when we will hear the latest findings from the members of the Text Recycling Research Project since- Case
Article published at two journals after withdrawal from first journal
Journal B was contacted by a group of authors who had published their article in Journal B a few months previously. The authors were concerned as they found that their article had been published by Journal A, a journal they had previously submitted the article to but withdrawn prior to publication. Journal B requested the withdrawal confirmation from the authors, and this was duly provided. On… - Case
Questionable authorship information
We have a paper in production that presents refutations of common criticisms made of a domestic cleaning or skin care ingredient. The majority of the authors are scientific research officers of a firm that sells products containing the ingredient. One other author is stated to be associated with a university but does not appear to hold a PhD. It is stated in the corrected proofs that this in… COPE team
…David has worked in publishing and communications teams in the non-profit sector for over 15 years. His last role was in the editorial team at Amnesty International. David is a full time employee of COPE. Len Gibbins Administrator…- News
When the peer review process goes sideways
…text-decoration:underline">Case 15-05 illustrates multiple ways that a reviewer failed to uphold this principle. The reviewer failed to disclose when invited by the editor to review the paper, their involvement in the design of the research project being reported. In fact, after the paper was published, the reviewer and another colleague asked to be named as authors. This particular case illustrates ethical breaches by… - News
Letter from COPE: June 2020
…questionnaire with both members and non-members. Interesting and informative opinions emerged from both the Forum and the online survey ‘Editing of reviewer comments’. From the survey, completed by 145 individuals, about 15% said they believed it is never acceptable for an editor to edit a peer… - Case
Reviewer requests to be added as an author after publication
A paper was submitted to our journal. The associate editor assigned to the paper immediately assigned a reviewer who he knew was well qualified to give a good review, as they had worked with the authors before. The editor did think it odd that the reviewer was not an author on this particular paper, given the close collaboration. However, when invited, the reviewer (R1), did not flag up any con… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 1: COPE commentary
…="https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?advanced=&terms-0-operator=AND&terms-0-term=LK-99&terms-0-field=abstract&terms-1-operator=AND&terms-1-term=&terms-1-field=title&classification-physics_archives=all&classification-include_cross_list=include&date-year=&date-filter_by=date_range&date-from_date=2023-07-23&date-to_date=2023-08-15&date-date_type=submitted_date&abstracts=show&size=50&… Common ethical and editorial dilemmas of author misconduct: how should we respond?
…0 2001 39 30 9 0 2002 18 14 4 0 2003 22 15 5 2 2004 25* 17 7 1 Total 212 163…- 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…