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2020

Case

Conflicting authorship in a collaboration

20-30

An article by Author X was published in Journal A. The refereeing process was conducted along standard rules. Two months after publication, Journal A received a complaint from an independent researcher Y, demanding retraction of the article on the basis that the article was published with an author list representing only a minority of the actual collaboration, with no new experimental data or further improvement in data evaluation or method development.

Case

Plagiarism versus questionable research writing practice

20-31

The authors of a paper were asked to explain alleged plagiarism in a submitted and subsequently accepted manuscript. This was based on a Turnitin report showing 28% similarity between the submitted manuscript (Author B) and a previously published paper (Author A), and 37% similarity between a published manuscript (Author A) and a submitted manuscript (Author B).

Case

Reviewer's identity revealed

20-14

The journal operates a double blind peer review system. Because the journal is small, it does not use a platform for reviews, so reviewers are sent a Word document containing the manuscript and an evaluation form to complete, in which they can leave their comments. However, some reviewers choose to comment directly on the Word document. Most of these comments are anonymised by appearing as user1 or some other nickname. However, sometimes a reviewer will comment using their real name.

Case

Paper published without permission or acknowledgement from institution

20-15

An author affiliated with a research institution R published two papers as a single author, one of them in a journal of publisher A. 

Case

Simultaneous submission without aiming at duplicate publication

20-12

An invite for a review was made by journal A. The first revision was done six months after submission, and the second revision two months later. Three weeks after submission of the second revision, the editor’s decision was minor revision. At this point, the corresponding author, author X, informed the editor of journal A that the authors were reluctant to respond to the comments of the second reviewer.

Case

Author requesting removal of verbatim text from published paper

20-13

Author A contacted author B. Author B had published a paper several years ago that contained verbatim text of author A’s previously published work. The verbatim work was cited but presented to the readers as paraphrased from the original. Similarity checking software showed that the paraphrased text was too close to the original text; in fact, it was quoted verbatim.

Case

Authorship order in dual publications

20-29

A group of experts from two different learned societies produced a consensus of guidelines on the management of a condition. Both societies wished to publish the manuscript in the respective journals of their societies. However, they requested the authorship order be different on the two respective submissions.
 
Questions for COPE Council

Case

Editor as author

20-28

A publisher was contacted by an editor-in-chief of one of their journals. The editor-in-chief wanted to submit an article written by themselves and one of the journal editorial board members. The article related to treatment provided by the editor to a patient, who was also the coauthor of the paper. 
 
The publisher was concerned about the ethical issues that would need to be addressed if the editor-in-chief submitted this article to the journal. 
 

Case

Unable to contact authors

20-11

A manuscript was submitted to a journal and after the review and revision process, the submitted manuscript was accepted for publication. During the manuscript revision process, the corresponding author was in contact with the journal: answered all of the emails, performed revisions of the manuscript, prepared answers to the comments of the reviewers, etc.

Case

Withdrawal of acceptance based on potentially unconsented data

20-27

Two papers were retracted (without dispute from the authors) after a lengthy investigation. It was discovered that some of the data used in these articles were gathered without participant consent for the study or for publication (no participants are identifiable). The investigation was conducted by a public body in the country of the authors, and the journal has been told that they will not be provided with the specific details of the ethically inappropriate data.

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