- Case
Accusation of non-attribution of authorship
…complainant made contact again saying that he still wanted to be an author so that he could use the reference in his CV. The editor responded sympathetically but concluded that "we published it in good faith on the reasonable assumption that the authorship was agreed. It really isn't appropriate to ask us to re-attribute authorship in this way". We told him that we had now decided to refer the case… - Case
Publication of expression of concern
A university institutional review board (IRB) investigation found that there was extensive data fabrication in connection with a clinical research study. Three articles and one abstract reporting results from this clinical study were published. Our journal published the abstract, which we intend to retract. The three articles have been retracted by the journals that published those articles. - Discussion documents
How should editors respond to plagiarism? April 2011
…plagiarism? If so, is the distinction between major and minor plagiarism useful or do we need more categories? What types of plagiarism should prompt journals to inform authors’ institutions? What other sanctions should journals impose on authors for plagiarism? How should journals handle cases of the various forms of plagiarism in submitted and published work? … - Case
Suspected plagiarism
…study found a cut-off value of 15% to be useful (https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s410...). If the editor believes that there was no malicious intent on the part of the authors, an educational approach may be appropriate—for example, if the authors are junior… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: July 2018
…Transparency 2020: Operational transparency, and research transparency Transparency is “mission critical” for COPE. Sixty COPE members gathered in Melbourne, Australia, for a COPE seminar, held in collaboration with Wiley, WCRI (World Conference on Research Integrity), RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) and… - Case
Disagreement between authors and sponsor
Our journal was contacted by a representative of a company following acceptance of a manuscript that was based on a clinical study sponsored by that company. Upon acceptance, the senior author had forwarded a copy of the manuscript to the company, who had identified some discrepancies between the data presented in the article and an initial report that had been presented to them while the… - Event
15th EASE General Assembly and Conference
The next EASE Conference will be the 15th EASE General Assembly and Conference to be held online from Wednesday to Friday, 23-25 June 2021 on the theme: Promoting sustainability in scholarly publishing: the role of editors The - Case
The incomplete systematic review
A systematic review on the effectiveness of a comparatively new group of drugs was submitted. The review had originally been for an independent body, so the submission was an abridged version. A reviewer pointed out that the review made no reference to a Cochrane review and the trials it cited, which had been published some four months before submission of the paper to the journal. The… - Case
Plagiarism and possible fraud
- The letter from the ethics committee chairman might have been fabricated. - A spreadsheet on 15 patients is unacceptable; the original data should definitely be available for such recent research. - The editors should write directly to both the current and previous institution heads. - The editors should also consider contacting the author’s regulatory body. - The journal should also write… - Case
Non-compliance of author with request for information
In April 2007, an original scientific article was published on line (ahead of print—it is now published in print, September 2007). In July 2007, the editors received the following request from a scientist who read this article: "Since I am interested in this subject and I already work with it, I need to know some technical information from the authors. I have called the group five times and… - Case
Ethical obligation to find reviewers
…reviews, both of which said "reject" so that was the decision in the end, as confirmed by the associate editor. The editor tries to get three reviewers for each paper, but routinely rejects on two high confidence ones.… - Case
Unhelpful institution report
An allegation of data fraud was not satisfactorily resolved by correspondence with the authors. We then went to the lead institution and asked for an investigation. Within 10 days we had a report clearing the authors, but interestingly using some of the exact same phrases the authors used in their responses to us. We felt that the report was too superficial and approached the other institution… - Discussion documents
Best practice in theses publishing. March 2017
…venues as to whether publication of theses, especially freely available ones, should be considered as “prior publications” when work from a thesis is submitted for publication to a journal. This document sets out some of the issues and suggests principles to consider. We welcome feedback on this discussion document, after which it will be published as a guidance document. We particularly welcome… - Case
Increased number of casual submissions
…signposted and clearly stated on the journal website and in the instructions to authors. … Audit your journal
…ethical issues depending on the size of the journal staff, the resources available to it and the discipline it covers. The COPE Core Practices offer guidance and we have provided links to background material and other relevant guidelines wherever possible, but the aim of the audit is to help editors think about ethical issues and decide what is…- Discussion documents
Predatory publishing
…Think.Check.Submit for authors to use as a checklist when choosing a trusted journal or publisher for their research Your feedback COPE welcomes feedback from publishers, journal editors, reviewers, researchers, institutions, librarians, funders, and other stakeholders on this subject. Add your feedback below.… - News
Citations: Link, Locate, Discover, Connect
…in his 1975 introduction to the first Journal Citation Reports: “A citation index is based on the principle that there is some meaningful relationship between one paper and some other that it cites or that cites it, and thus between the work of the two authors or two groups of authors who published the papers.”[1] These relationships, aggregated at scale, provide a deep, textured understanding of… - Discussion documents
Citation manipulation
…welcomes feedback from publishers, journal editors, reviewers, researchers, institutions, librarians, funders, and other stakeholders on this subject. Add your feedback below.… - Flowcharts
Scientific rigour of published data: dealing with concerns
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised about the scientific rigour of a dataset, after publication. The flowchart offers data publishers, such as a journal or a data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle this process. - Flowcharts
Authorship and contributorship of unpublished data: dealing with concerns
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7896759 Concerns are raised regarding authorship or contributorship of a dataset, before publication. The flowchart provides data publishers, such as a journal or data repository, a step by step guide on how to handle the concerns.