You are here

Home Allegations of misconduct Whistleblowers

Whistleblowers

Michael Dougherty, Professor of Philosophy, Ohio Dominican University speaks about authorship violations in philosophy including:

  • using pseudonyms in philosophy and how to avoid post-publication pseudonym surprises.
  • why we should be concerned about plagiarism, types of plagiarism in philosophy and what are the options for whistleblowers?
  • What editors and publishers can do to dis-incentivise academic plagiarism.

 

Case

Suspected plagiarism

19-04

A single author submitted a paper to our journal. A similarity check revealed 48% similarity with another published paper. The published paper was by different authors—5 in total. The similarities between the papers were in the introduction, methods and discussion sections. The submitting author did not reference the published article.

We queried the corresponding author but have not received a response. 

Case

Scientific misconduct claim from a whistleblower where the institution will not investigate

18-08

A journal received an allegation of scientific misconduct from an anonymous individual stating they were from the group that had written the paper (Institution-1, there are two institutions involved in this research). The email stated that the scientific bases of the article were unreliable. The paper was currently with the authors who were revising the paper after the first round of review, and additional experiments were required.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/Z9gtPzCa

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to emails from whistle blowers. We encourage journal editors and publishers to comment (whether or not they are COPE members), and also welcome comments from researchers/authors and academic institutions. Please send us comments. http://publicationethics.org/contact-us

Background

About this resource

Written by COPE Council
Version 1  January 2013
How to cite this  
COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document. Responding to anonymous whistleblowers, January 2013 

Our COPE materials are available to use under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they
endorse you or your use of the work).

Non-commercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. We ask that you give full accreditation to COPE with a link to our website: publicationethics.org

Full page history

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.14

COPE's guidelines, as a flowchart, on how to respond to whistleblowers when concerns are raised about a published article on a social media site.

How should you respond when a published article is criticised on social media or a post-publication peer review site(s)? The criticism could include anonymous or not anonymous concerns about scientific soundness or allegations of plagiarism, figure manipulation or other forms of misconduct.

About this resource

Full page history

  • 11 February 2021

    Sabah title

  • 9 November 2020

    Text correction

    View revision
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.25

How should you respond when concerns are raised by a whistleblower about a published article directly via email to the editor or publisher? This could include anonymous or not anonymous concerns about scientific soundness or allegations of plagiarism, figure manipulation or other forms of misconduct.

About this resource

Full page history

  • 11 February 2021

    Sabah title

  • 9 November 2020

    Text correction

    View revision
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24318/qiW7mhWw

Background

On occasion a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. Complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these complaints turn out to be well founded, investigations should proceed as warranted. However, there are also cases where a complainant makes repeated allegations against a journal, editor, or author that turn out to be baseless. Examples of multiple complaints include:

About this resource

Cite this as: COPE Council. COPE Discussion Document: Addressing ethics complaints from complainants who submit multiple issues. March 2015. https://doi.org/10.24318/qiW7mhWw
Version 1: March 2015
© 2020 Committee on Publication Ethics (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Full page history

Case

Institutional investigation of authorship dispute

16-15

We received a claim that several authors were removed from an article published in one of our journals before the article was submitted. None of those said to have been removed were acknowledged.

Case

Author accused of stealing research and publishing under their name

16-17

We received a letter from a third party, accusing author A of putting his/her name against an article, published in our journal, when the research itself belongs to author A's student.

Download presentation: New guidelines from COPE: ethical guidelines for peer reviewers, whistleblowers and more {PDF, 1354 KB]

Pages