- Case
Author displays bullying behaviour towards handling editor
…and promising to take action internally. Question(s) for the COPE Forum Did the journal handle the case appropriately? Could something else or something different have been done? How can this type of situation be prevented? … - Case
Ethics approval for survey design
…acknowledged they chose to collect data prior to IRB submission and approval under the pandemic circumstances, with a self-determination they were following the requirements of the Helsinki Declaration and no other documented ethical or human subjects’ review prior to data collection was apparent. The journal often receives manuscripts of survey results intended for an internal organisation needs… - Case
Request for addition of new authors
…If the journal follows the authorship guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), then someone who helps implement revisions and upload a manuscript would not appear to qualify for authorship. According to the… - Case
Reviewer misconduct and its potential impact on an submitted manuscript
…corrected and repository R contains the original code and accompanying text, should Journal Y still consider Author X’s article for publication if the main focus of the article was on code errors that have since been corrected? Moreover, if they can consider the article, should they wait until after reviewer Z’s article and the repository have been corrected? An internal suggestion is to… - Seminars and webinars
Good Publication Practice 2022
…Macau, China, and the Macau Pharmacology Association, the forum was attended by authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers, as well as delegates of two concurrent conferences (the 4th Sino-CPLP Symposium on Natural Products and Biodiversity Resources and the International Forum on Development of Traditional Chinese Medicine Industry). The purpose of the 3-hour event was to provide an update of… - News
Post-publication conflicts of interest
…complete suite of English language COPE flowcharts was recently revised to follow a consistent logic, design, and layout. The content of the flowcharts, and of other guidance documents, will be gradually updated to reflect evolving best practices and industry standards. The first flowchart to have been updated, now… - Case
Lack of ethical approval and not reporting experimental evidence
…standard from the authors, but they do not seem to have broken the rules as at the time of submission (in 1995), formal approval was not considered mandatory. In terms of the data, the Forum agreed that the editor needs to decide whether the basic findings of the study are sound. By leaving out some of the data, were the readers mislead? If the data that have been omitted are incidental and do not… - Case
Author retracts request to be removed from author list
…were, and remain, unavailable due to a hard drive failure. Dr A stated that he was aware of the content of these papers. We were disinclined to acquiesce with the original request to remove Dr A’s name from the author list because first authors are ultimately responsible for ensuring that a paper meets the standards of academic integrity. We are also disinclined to accommodate the follow-up… - Seminars and webinars
Inclusive language: policing or progressive?
…industry standard to promote inclusive communication habits, but also to provide a ‘living archive’ which could change as language use and sensitivities evolve. She describes the efforts of the writing group to address their own biases and to uncover gaps in their knowledge, and gives an example of a case at her own journal where a correction was issued to address language use. Her final message,… - News
Case discussion: Low-risk study with no ethics committee approval
…were from an international non-governmental organisation and the country’s government, which together funded and conducted the campaign. The manuscript also reported on data from an online survey of the petition signers that had not been reviewed by a research ethics committee. The authors claimed that the survey was low risk, the participants had consented, and the data were not of a sensitive… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: August 2018
#CitationManipulation Nearly a decade ago, before I became actively involved in COPE, and increased my awareness of publication ethics issues, I was the editor of a small international scholarly nursing journal. Like many nursing journals, it used a double-blind process for manuscript review. As the editor I made the final decision about papers after peer review and editorial board… - News
Letter from the COPE Vice-Chair: May 2020
…regions of the world and resurfacing in others, the preparation and submission of manuscripts for publication can be compromised by broken chains of communication and non-responsiveness of coauthors. In light of these challenges, the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals have proposed a modification of the ICMJE - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: November 2021
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/itamar-ashkenazi">Itamar Ashkenazi, Israel Institute of Technology Medical School, Israel Patrick Franzen, SPIE, the International Society of Optics and Photonics, USA Anubhav Pradhan, Department of Liberal Arts, IIT Bhilai, India - Case
Allegations of scientific fraud and unethical conduct of experiments with attempts to silence the whistleblower
…afterwards he was told that an internal enquiry had found no cause for concern. The whistleblower asked why he had not been asked for the names of the patients who disputed the events described in the paper or asked to produce documents. He was threatened with legal action and expelled from an MRC committee on which he sat. The committee chairman was one of the authors of the disputed study.The institution… - Case
Scientist reads published paper by former collaborators and claims co-authorship
…the resultant paper, published in another journal in 2009, were author C, a PhD student of author B, and author B, with Dr A as the last author. Dr A and Dr B collaborated further in Country S in three investigations In June 2006, November 2006 and June 2007, Dr A was invited to participate as a representative of an international centre for medical research in Country R. When in the field, Dr… - Case
Dual submission and editor’s failure to take action
…impolite, but it was not unethical. The journal may wish to modify their policies so that withdrawing an article does not involve this technical hitch. A suggestion was for the journal to revise their policy of requiring copyright transfer on submission. It is unusual internationally, and it can in effect hold the authors hostage. Another suggestion was to email the authors explaining their error,… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Keynote address
…described. Universities and publishers must establish a working, strategic two-way conversation and relationship to facilitate mutual success in a highly competitive international context. This will then evolve into a recognition of some shared and mutual interests and goals, and a commitment to work together. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A. - Case
Should we allow pseudonymous authorship?
…their employer to ensure internal compliance. Using pseudonyms may also create procedural complications for journals, such as how to link ORCID ids to the authors, so if a journal is to support such a move then it must be fully confident that there are risks to the authors which justify masking their identities. If the publisher does not have text in their guidelines on this then it… - News
Where next in peer review? Part 2: COPE commentary
…href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11192-018-2969-2"> study in 2019 showed that the use of digital tools for screening was associated with a lower chance that a paper would be retracted after publication, although it is difficult to untangle whether this is because of higher detection rates, or because it acted as a deterrent to bad behaviour. We should ask ourselves if this is a better future (higher ethical standards) or a worse one…