- Case
The ethics of drug/medication use evaluation audit cycles and publication of the results
COPE suggested we develop internal policies regarding situations like these, and this was discussed at our subsequent editorial board meeting. The Committee's advice was found to be very helpful by the board, and in particular the agreement with our assessment that the staff, not the patients, were the subjects of this particular “experiment”, and some discussion occurred surrounding this and… - Case
Disagreement between authors and sponsor
…conduct an extensive internal one. The associate editor who had accepted the manuscript and a representative of the editorial board were asked to assess the company's claims and the authors' responses and they felt that the authors had satisfactorily answered the questions that had been raised. The company contacted the ethics committee of the authors' institution and reported their concerns. The… - Case
Omitted author
…International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE http://www.icmje.org/)) we can still, if all coauthors agree, add him as a coauthor. If he does not meet the authorship criteria then it would be possible to offer acknowledgement." The editor went on to highlight the ICMJE criteria as follows: (1) Substantial contributions to conception and design or… - Case
Duplicate submission or self plagiarism. Is the author to blame?
…proceedings. The reviewer sent us the article downloaded from the conference website highlighting the overlapping paragraphs, which was nearly 80%. The journal wrote to the authors asking for an explanation. The authors stated that they had submitted an abstract of their work for participation in the international conference. The abstract was accepted on the condition that they submitted the… - Case
Undeclared author conflict of interest
…consider double checking with the authors of the article that the mental health resource data linked to the study were collected, used and published ethically and legally per se. If the journal is looking to review its own stated policy on conflicts of interest, it might be useful to consider the International Committee of Medical Journal Editor (ICMJE) guidelines on declarations of… - Case
Request to remove author from submitted manuscript due to academic misconduct
…change if there were additional internal relationships in the research team, for example, if the first author was a student, and the author whose behaviour has been deemed to be questionable was the supervisor? … COPE webinar: Understanding text recycling
…University. Professor of Writing and Linguistics, Director of the University Writing Center, and Editor of Across the Disciplines Michael Pemberton is past president of the International Writing Centers Association. He has published six books and over 50 articles on writing center theory, ethics and technologies. Michael serves on the editorial and review boards of multiple…- Case
Ethical concerns about a study involving human subjects
…difficult case as it is a single author paper. If there had been more than one author on the paper, the journal could have applied the revised criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The fourth criterion states that all authors are accountable for all aspects of the work and are responsible for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of… - Forum discussion topics
Author behavioural misconduct
…“behavioural misconduct” should be considered a form of research misconduct. Resnik (2019) 3 argued that sexual harassment meets three of four legally enforceable ethical standards for the conduct of research, and some scholarly societies, journals, and institutions have already implemented 4, or are keen to implement, a research misconduct… - Case
Using the name of a scientific society inappropriately
…should be funded as unrestricted educational grants, but that is not always the case. Whatever the outcome, the editorial board might like to consider conducting a post-mortem on this incident and look at best practices and their internal editorial processes. … - Case
Authorship issue related to misleading action of one author
The editor provided an update to the Forum. Although the authors were originally working at the same agency, there was a change in employment and only the first author was now employed there. Through conversations with the third author, it became apparent that the second author had delegated manuscript writing to the third author, who was an intern at the time for the consulting agency.… - Case
Disputed change in authorship
…further? If so, the journal might consider publishing an Expression of Concern while that process occurs. Although the institution has pre-empted the process where a journal would have sought the help of an institution, the case is incomplete as author D should now be launching an internal appeal with the institution. The institution needs to explain to the journal what the problem was: were there… - Forum discussion topics
Coordinating multi-journal complaints
…When issuing a post-publication notice, in what circumstances would it be appropriate to acknowledge broader concerns beyond the linked article? Journals, or publishers, with many affected articles can internally coordinate post-publication editorial action and could draw attention to broader concerns by self-reference. For journals with few affected articles, how can broader… - Event
COPE webinar: Enhancing partnerships of institutions and journals
…policies to support and promote ethical research practices. Previously, Susan served as the Director for the Division of Investigative Oversight (DIO), in the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI), responsible for the oversight of national and international research misconduct matters. Other positions include Director of Research Grants for a non-profit organisation and a Program Officer at the National… - News
In the news: December Digest
…international group of authors in Ophthalmology topics selected 200 references from PubMed and then checked them for Open Access status. Those that were paywalled were examined to see if they were available at established institutions in low income countries or through HINARI. There was a lot of heterogeneity from 0% full texts to 95%, with a mean of 47% availability. Use of complementary "alternative ways"… - News
Case Discussion: Inconclusive institutional investigation into authorship dispute
…guidelines for authors and of internal processes to verify compliance with those guidelines. Without adequate enforcement, well developed policies will not be of any use in preventing future disputes. Problems arising with an article prior to publication can be handled by holding that article until the situation is resolved. When the problem occurs post-publication, there is a need to correct the… - News
In the news: April 2021
…organisations embed a "dedication to equity and justice into everything a publisher does". COVID-19 The International COVID-19 suicide prevention research collaborative (ICSPRC) - News
In the news: May 2021
…need for new guidance around the use of these not yet peer-reviewed findings. Three organisations for medical writing professionals (American Medical Writers Association (AMWA), European Medical Writers Association (EMWA) and International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP)) have issued a - News
Paper mills in the news
…the LMU Open Science Center. In March, 2022 a preprint by Anna Abalkina revealed an extensive series of 434 publications originating from Russia-based paper mill, International Publisher LLC. The study estimated the total financial value of authorship slots offered by the publisher in the three years between 2019-2021 at $6.5 million, raising… - Case
Concern about reporting of a trial and also its DSMB
…editorial that lays out our concerns with the conduct of the trial, but notwithstanding those, our reasons why we think it should be published. We also discussed whether we needed to raise the issue of the DSMB with the authors’ institution. We discussed the paper with our internal ethics board and they unanimously agreed we should reject the paper (mainly because of the concerns over the…