2022

An article is submitted to a journal and accepted for future publication. The authors receive the acceptance letter and the script is waiting for the final publication process (within 4-6 months).

During this time the authors ask the journal if they can present the full text of the article at a conference (which is going to be held before the publication by the journal). They also declare that the conference will not publish the manuscript (the abstract or full text) elsewhere.

We have noticed a lot of variety in the way that ethical approval for Case Reports are published in different journals. For example, some state that the study was determined not to require Ethics Committee (EC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) review especially if it was a retrospective review. Others state that all procedures were carried out in accordance with approved ethical standards, giving the name and reference number of the relevant IRB.

A COPE member has noted instances of journals contacting individuals - who are not on their editorial board - to request that they act as guest editor for a single manuscript. The invitation makes it clear that they are being asked to recruit reviewers and to make the editorial decision. This practice includes instances where the invitee has had no prior contact with the journal.

The journal conducts double-anonymous reviews of all manuscripts submitted. As part of the decision process, reviewers routinely receive a copy of the decision letter, which includes reviewers’ comments. In the transition to a new editorial staff, a change to the email template inadvertently meant that the full letter was sent out, including the corresponding author’s name. Before this was discovered, decision letters for multiple manuscripts had been shared with reviewers.

Journal A is planning on publishing translations of some of their articles, either in the publisher's national journal or in a web publication as popularized versions. Both are diamond open access journals which are indexed by DOAJ. One publishes in English, the other in two other languages. 

Questions for COPE Council

Regarding a submitted (but not yet accepted) paper from a scientific collaboration, one of the authors has asked whether an instance of academic misconduct or - for that matter - any non-scientific but rather unsavoury personal facts or accusations (e.g.

A manuscript was submitted to Journal A. A routine CrossCheck report revealed a 70% match to the author's PhD thesis. The journal recommended that the author expand the article with new content.

The author raised an objection, arguing that the PhD thesis is not published in a journal, but is only included in the institutional library.

Author X raised concerns that confidential information obtained during the peer review of their submission with Journal Y had been misappropriated by one of the reviewers of their submission (reviewer Z). Author X believed that reviewer Z had used this confidential information in order to silently alter code published by reviewer Z with repository R, which contained errors that were highlighted in Author X’s submission to Journal Y. Author X’s article is now on hold.

The journal published an original article in 2022. Recently, we received feedback from a third party that the paper is similar to the authors' other work published in 2019. The duplicate rate of the initial submission was 31% and the final version was 24% which is within the journal’s standard. The concern was that the paper may not add value as the authors have already published similar research and the 2022 paper contains no new wet lab findings.

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.