COPE’s publication ethics cases:

reclassification and analysis

Irene Hames, PhD, FSB

COPE Council Member

@irenehames @C0PE

EASE/ISMTE Conference, Blankenberge, 24 September 2013

.

.

● Cases database

● Updated classification scheme needed

● New scheme - 18 main Classifications, up to 2 per case

- 99 Keywords, up to 10 per case

- descriptive, not judgemental

● The coding exercise

Classifications and Keywords indicate the topics discussed, not that a

particular form of misconduct had occurred

Cases, Classifications & Keywords, 1997-2012

Number Mean

Classification of COPE cases, 1997-2012

Classification of COPE cases, 1997-2012,

categories with >7 instances in a 4-year period

COPE resource development

● eLearning modules re-launched 2013: Introduction to publication

ethics (free), Plagiarism, Data falsification, Data fabrication, Conflict

of interest, Authorship

● eLearning modules in development: Editor misconduct, Reviewer

misconduct, Redundant publication, Selective reporting, Unethical

research

● Discussion documents in preparation: Corrections (expanding on

Retraction Guidelines), Authorship, and Text recycling

● New and enhanced Flowcharts planned

● New Guidelines … on peer review …

‘Fake reviewer’ cases

.

‘COPE’s new Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers: background, issues, and evolution’,

ISMTE, EON May 2013, Vol6, issue4, http://www.ismte.org/Shared_Articles-

COPEs_new_Ethical_Guidelines_for_Peer_Reviewers_background_issues_and_evolution/

‘Promoting integrity in research publication’

● Education as well as guidance and advice

● Making the Forum accessible to more members, more often, in more

ways

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Irene Hames: irene.hames@gmail.com @irenehames

Comments/queries for COPE: Natalie Ridgeway Operations Manager

cope_opsmanager@publicationethics.org @C0PE

Website: http://www.publicationethics.org/

.

COPE Case Study Workshop

COPE Case Study Workshop

Moderators

Mirjam Curno, Switzerland

Irene Hames, UK

André van Steirteghem, Belgium

Workshop outline

• Three groups, three cases, 60 minutes

• Q&A, closing comments

• Forum advice sheets, feedback forms

Case 1 ‘Recycling’ reviews: is it acceptable?

A reader flags up that a review article, originally published in journal X in April 2003,

subsequently appeared with some additions in your journal in July 2004. The authors

on the papers are the same except for one. You review the two articles side by side

and identify that significant portions of the text from the 2003 journal X publication are

identical to those in your 2004 publication. These portions include the title, four out of

seven headings and their associated sections (barring a few minor changes), the

abstracts and four of the five images. The remaining three sections are new.

Journal X’s paper is only cited once in your paper and this is only in reference to

permission to reproduce an image. No other citation or reference is given to the

paper in journal X.

You write to the corresponding author seeking an explanation. He/she responds

promptly, admitting the duplicated text, but claiming that since the article was not

original research but an invited (and updated) review, there is not a problem,

especially since he/she “duly cited the prior paper… so that nothing was ever

concealed”.

Should you pursue this as you might a case of text recycling/duplicate publication in an

original article and retract the paper, or is there a case for leniency here?

Case 2 Author refusing to agree to a retraction

The director for research at author Y’s institution contacts you (the editor of journal A),

stating that they have found what they consider to be serious misconduct in an article

written by author Y and published in your journal. The research director has

requested that author Y retract the paper but author Y has refused to do so. The

institution is therefore contacting journal A to say that the institution’s name should

not be connected with the article, and the institution believes that the misconduct

should be made known to journal A’s readers as soon as possible. The misconduct

by author Y involves the repeated inappropriate combination of results from different

experiments to make it appear they come from single experiments.

You contact author Y, and confirm that two of the ‘representative’ images of individual

experiments in the article published in your journal are indeed composites of images

from different experiments. You therefore also request that author Y retract the

paper. Author Y, however, still refuses to do so, believing the data not to be flawed,

just its presentation. You feel a responsibility to let your readers know as soon as

possible that there are issues with the paper and wonder about issuing an expression

of concern until matters have been resolved between the researcher, their institution

and the journal.

Is the publication of an expression of concern the appropriate way forward? What should

you do to help resolve the situation? Should you act without agreement between the

parties?

Case 3 Suspicion of breach of proper

peer-reviewer behaviour

An author submitted a paper to your journal (X) on a topic of high interest. Its peer review has been rather protracted

because of long response times, reviewer substitution and the need to re-review the manuscript after a major

revision.

Just before the second decision is rendered, the author contacts you with a serious concern that the accepted

standards of peer review have been compromised: specifically, the author has just seen, in an online version of

journal Y, an article that is very similar in many places to the article that he/she has submitted to your journal (X).

The author suspects that one of the peer reviewers has either taken personal advantage of the opportunity or

passed the paper on to another researcher who is either an author on the paper published in journal Y or a close

contact of one of the authors.

You compare the two papers, note striking similarities in two large sections (also mirrored by the order of reference

citation in those sections) but assure the author—without revealing the identity of the peer reviewers of his/her

paper—that there is no obvious connection between the reviewers and the authors of the first published paper (a

PubMed search for co-authorship and a Google search for association of names revealed no connection

whatsoever).

The author thinks of other ways in which the similarity could have arisen, and finally remembers having submitted a

grant proposal with very similar wording, which might have been reviewed by the other authors. That, and the

assurances from you, put the case to rest at your journal.

However, what should/could you have done to resolve the matter had the suspicion of breach of peer-review

confidentiality or personal benefit been more likely (i.e., likely enough to suggest more background research was

needed)? How could such a case be resolved to the satisfaction of the author if he/she had been the victim of

improper reviewer behaviour (i.e., such that the true precedence of his/her work would be recognised by readers in

contrast with that of the opportunist author/s)? Do you think your investigations were thorough enough to put the

case to rest?