Undisclosed conflict of interest in a published article: updated flowchart
The COPE flowcharts are consistently rated by members as being among the most useful and frequently consulted COPE resources. Available in different languages, they offer practical guidance to handle a variety of ethical issues encountered in scholarly publishing either before or after publication.
El autor principal de un artículo rechazado para su publicación identificó y nombró de forma pública a uno de los cuatro revisores durante una entrevista con los medios de comunicación tras publicar el artículo en otra revista. El autor dio a entender en la entrevista y más tarde en Twitter que el artículo había sido rechazado por la revisión de este revisor y afirmó que el revisor no había revelado conflictos de interés relevantes.
Un autor potencial se puso en contacto con la oficina editorial de una revista para solicitar que ciertos expertos que participaron en la elaboración de guías sobre un tema particular no participasen en la revisión de su artículo. El autor nombró específicamente a ciertos de estos expertos, entre los que se incluía a miembros del consejo editorial de la revista.
This month’s topic is “journal management” and on first blush, it isn’t obvious how the concept of “ethics” applies to this topic. I thought of things like selection and implementation of a manuscript manager, paying bills, identifying reviewers, etc. But when I got past my concrete thinking it’s clear journals must be managed based on fundamental ethical principles. These include: Autonomy, Justice, beneficence, non-malfeasance.
This COPE discussion document introduces issues around competing interests/conflicts of interest and describes practical issues which might occur when handling cases. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate.
Written by COPE Council Version 1 January 2016 How to cite this
COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document: Handling competing interests. July 2016. https://doi.org/10.24318/ElTeSLhp
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The first author of a paper rejected by our journal publicly identified one of the four peer reviewers for the paper by name. She did this during a media interview conducted after the paper was published by another journal. The first author implied in that interview and subsequently on Twitter that the paper was rejected because of that person's review and also claimed the reviewer did not reveal relevant COIs.
A prospective author contacted the editorial office of a medical journal to request that an intended submission was not reviewed or consulted on by experts involved in a number of published guidelines on the topic of the paper. The author named some of these experts, which included members of the journal’s editorial board (including editor A).