2009

Search results

1. Falsification of certificates of deposit of new bacterial species in culture collections

   09-29 The process of naming and describing novel species of bacteria is governed by the Bacteriological Code. As part of this process, authors are required to deposit the type strain of the novel species in at least two culture ...

2. Publisher and stakeholder with misaligned conflict of interest policies

   09-26 We have recently developed and begun to put into practice a policy on collection and declaration of conflicts of interest statements from any individual involved in contributing to or reviewing our pathways. This policy includes ...

3. Ethics committee waives consent for case report, editor disagrees

   09-25 The authors wish to publish a case report that aims to characterise complex chromosomal abnormalities in a rare congenital syndrome. It describes, in detail, the clinical features of two newborn infants. When asked about consent to ...

4. Homeoprophylactic treatment of a zoonotic disease

   09-24 This research article investigated the effect of the widespread administration of a homeoprophylactic preparation against a bacterial zoonotic disease in a developing country after a period of particularly heavy rainfall. The ...

5. Plagiarism, double submission and reviewer ethicality

   09-22 This is a complicated case which involves possible plagiarism, double submission and reviewer misconduct. The timeline is as follows:  ...

6. Scientist reads published paper by former collaborators and claims co-authorship

   09-23 The case concerns a paper we published, ahead of print, on the journal’s website on 5 October 2009. A week later we received a letter from Dr A who claimed that the authors had a major conflict of interest and implied that she ...

7. Deception in submitting manuscript for publication

   09-28 A manuscript was submitted to my journal. The author, on his own accord, submitted the manuscript for review to several reviewers under the guise that this was sent by me. The author sent the following explanation: ...

8. Self plagiarism

   09-21 On initial assessment of a submitted review paper with a single author, the editor checked some of the references to the author’s own work that were cited in the paper. The author mentioned in the covering letter that he had ...

9. Is it a breach of confidentiality to send letters to the editor to criticised authors for comment?

   09-18 (presented by Liz Wager on behalf of an author) (NB: COPE doesn’t normally discuss cases from non-members but as this raised some interesting general points, we thought it would be interesting to hear Forum’s views) ...

10. Sections of plagiarised text in an e-publication

    09-27 An article was published online (e-pub), and a reader notified the editor about a section of the abstract that was taken from a review article published in another journal by different authors. Subsequent analysis of the e-pub ...

11. Alleged unauthorized use of data and possible dual publication

    09-20 During review of a manuscript submitted to our journal, a dispute arose over some of the data used in the database that was described in the submitted paper. ...

12. Provenance of a correction: undisclosed court case involvement

    09-19 The first author of a paper published in 2004 has submitted a “letter to the editor” (LTTE) offering some corrections, and reaffirming some conclusions. The letter has not been published. A pharma company (whose drug is linked by ...

13. Pedigree descriptions: genotyping results for family members

    09-17 We received a paper which describes genotyping results from a large number of individuals (>50) from five unrelated families, in which family members had various blood and liver conditions. On submission we noted that the paper ...

14. Duplicate submission

    09-15 We received a manuscript for consideration. The manuscript was assigned to one of our section editors who sent it for review. Subsequently, the editor-in-chief received an invitation from another journal to review the same paper. ...

15. Ethics and consent in research

    09-16 A letter was sent to the chief editor of our journal in response to a recently published article in our journal. The author had serious concerns about the ethics and consent obtained as a result of this study and the follow-up by ...

16. Possible plagiarism

    09-14 A review paper (paper 1) was published in journal A. A review paper on the same subject (paper 2) by a different author was published in my journal (journal B) later in the same year. The authors of paper 1 and the editor of ...

17. Authors bearing gifts …

    09-09 The editor of an international journal is bothered: he has received a gift that looks expensive, though it might not be. ...

18. Reviewer misconduct?

    09-13 We have received threats of legal action from the authors of a manuscript rejected by our journal, henceforth referred to as journal A. These “aggrieved” authors claim that their manuscript was unfairly reviewed by a close ...

19. The ethics of using privileged information

    09-12 A paper published in one of our journals (paper A) provoked the submission of a correspondence article claiming that a minor conclusion of the paper was a misinterpretation and erroneous. The point in contention was a question of ...

20. HIV homeopathy

    09-11 The authors carried out a study. A homeopathic treatment was given to people with HIV/AIDs. The outcome was quality of life, as measured by a questionnaire after 1 month and 18 months of treatment. Participants were selected for ...

21. Concern about reporting of a trial and also its DSMB

    09-10 We received a paper reporting a trial. There has only been one previous trial of this intervention in this condition that we know of (which was also done by these investigators). There were substantial issues with the reporting of ...

22. Has formal ethical approval been granted that satisfies publication criteria?

    09-08 The issue here is whether formal ethics approval has been granted in order to satisfy publication criteria. By way of some background information, a lot of screening data are collected on many athletes in many sports, both ...

23. Duplicate publication or salami publication?

    09-07 An author submitted an article to my journal. The editorial board discovered that the author had already published his article in another journal. The editorial board communicated with the author and he defended himself stating ...

24. Suspected contact between reviewer and an author led to coauthorship of the reviewer

    09-05 A manuscript was submitted via our electronic submission system and processed in accordance with the standard procedures of the journal. This was originally a single author submission, and in the covering letter the author ...

25. Possible serial misconduct in relation to coauthors and other activities

    09-04 I am the editor of an international clinical journal and am facing a very unusual problem that does not fit readily into COPE flowcharts. ...

26. An authorship dispute and a question about when a paper is considered published

    09-02  Authors A and B submitted a paper PV1 to an international conference which was accepted by the editor E of the conference proceedings. The copyright of the paper was assigned to the publishers PC of the conference proceedings. The ...

27. Paper published that is a verbatim copy of another published one by another author

    09-01 This is a report of two cases of possible misconduct by the same author(s): one that was identified during the review process and one only after it was published. ...

28. Multiple publication of research

    09-03 We submit to COPE a case regarding the suspected multiple publication of research on four separate occasions in four different journals. ...

29. Duplicate publication

    09-06 We are fortunate to have very knowledgeable reviewers who are immersed in their specialty and in the literature. A reviewer informed us that s(he) was working on a review of a manuscript and thought that there had to be more ...