Research Ethics and Integrity: How COPE can help
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COPE assists journals and publishers with publication ethics issues. It describes 10 core practices for maintaining integrity, including policies on authorship, misconduct allegations, plagiarism, conflicts of interest, and complaints. COPE has over 40 council members from various countries and disciplines. It provides resources like guidelines, flowcharts and training to help journals uphold ethical standards. COPE also engages with China on these issues, through seminars, Chinese language materials and responding to the country's new research regulations.
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Research Ethics and Integrity: How COPE can help
- 1. Information Classification: General Research Ethics and Integrity: How COPE can help Deborah Kahn, COPE Council Member & Trustee, Global Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis Disclosure: Deborah Kahn receives no form of compensation from COPE for her voluntary role with COPE. Deborah Kahn is employed full time by Taylor & Francis Ltd 30 October 2019 publicationethics.org
- 2. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org • About COPE • COPE activities in China • Aspects of publishing ethics – Authorship and contributorship – Allegations of misconduct – Plagiarism and copyright infringement – Conflicts of interest – Complaints and appeals • Questions and answers What I will cover
- 3. Information Classification: General COPE Council COPE理事会 • 40 Council members from 13 countries and a range of disciplines; • academic scholars, editors, professionals in publishing and editorships • Voluntary role
- 5. Information Classification: General How COPE responds and stays true • We deliver resources that support, inform and educate on publication ethics. • We lead thinking and advance understanding in publication ethics. • We bring a calm, neutral, and professional voice to current debates about publication ethics.
- 7. Information Classification: General COPE assists editors of scholarly journals and publishers - as well as other parties, such as institutions - in their work to preserve and promote the integrity of the scholarly record through policies and practices. COPE describes these in 10 “Core Practices”. COPE's Core Practices should be considered alongside specific national and international codes of conduct for research. COPE’s Core Practices https://publicationethics.org/core-practices
- 8. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org 1. Allegations of misconduct Journals should have a clearly described process for handling allegations, however they are brought to the journal's or publisher’s attention. Journals must take seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post-publication. Policies should include how to handle allegations from whistleblowers. 2. Authorship and contributorship Clear policies (that allow for transparency around who contributed to the work and in what capacity) should be in place for requirements for authorship and contributorship as well as processes for managing potential disputes.
- 9. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org 3. Complaints and appeals Journals should have a clearly described process for handling complaints against the journal, its staff, editorial board or publisher. 4. Conflicts of interest There must be clear definitions of conflicts of interest and processes for handling conflicts of interest of authors, reviewers, editors, journals and publishers, whether identified before or after publication.
- 10. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org 5. Data and reproducibility Journals should include policies on data availability and encourage the use of reporting guidelines and registration of clinical trials and other study designs according to standard practice in their discipline. 6. Ethical oversight Ethical oversight should include, but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and of business/marketing practices.
- 11. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org 7. Intellectual property All policies on intellectual property, including copyright and publishing licenses, should be clearly described. In addition, any costs associated with publishing should be obvious to authors and readers. Policies should be clear on what counts as prepublication that will preclude consideration. What constitutes plagiarism and redundant/overlapping publication should be specified. 8. Journal management A well-described and implemented infrastructure is essential, including the business model, policies, processes and software for efficient running of an editorially independent journal, as well as the efficient management and training of editorial boards and editorial and publishing staff.
- 12. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org 9. Peer review processes All peer review processes must be transparently described and well managed. Journals should provide training for editors and reviewers and have policies on diverse aspects of peer review, especially with respect to adoption of appropriate models of review and processes for handling conflicts of interest, appeals and disputes that may arise in peer review. 10. Post-publication discussions, corrections Journals must allow debate post publication either on their site, through letters to the editor, or on an external moderated site, such as PubPeer. They must have mechanisms for correcting, revising or retracting articles after publication.
- 13. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org https://publicationethics.org/resources 10 core practices • Flowcharts for handling cases of alleged misconduct – all translated into Chinese https://publicationethics.org /resources/flowcharts/chine se-all-flowcharts • Infographics • Best practice guidelines • Discussion documents • Newsletter, presentation archives • COPE Forum cases For members: • E-Learning modules • Letter templates, Self-audit tool for journals • Seminars/workshops and webinars • COPE Forum Resources
- 17. Information Classification: General New Regulations in China • 《关于进一步加强科研诚信建设的若干意见》 Opinions on Further Strengthening the construction of scientific research integrity issued by General Office of the CPC Central Committee and General Office of the State Council, PRC. on 30th May 2018 • 《哲学社会科学科研诚信建设实施办法》 Measures for the implementation of the construction of scientific research integrity in philosophy and Social Sciences Jointly issued by 7 ministries on 16th May 2019 • 《 科技期刊出版伦理规范 》Code of ethics for publication of scientific and Technological Journals issued by CAST September 2019 • 《科研诚信案件调查处理规则（试行）》 Rules for investigation and handling of integrity cases in scientific research (Trial) jointly issued by 20 Ministries on 11th October 2019
- 18. Information Classification: General Chinese language guidelines for peer reviewers https://publicationethics.org/files/Ethical_Guidlines_for_PeerReviewers_Chinese_Web.pdf
- 19. Information Classification: General Chinese language flowcharts https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts /chinese-all-flowcharts
- 20. Information Classification: General Chinese Language Newsletter
- 21. Information Classification: General COPE’s 1st China Seminar 2017, Beijing
- 22. Information Classification: General Chinese language e-learning resources
- 23. Information Classification: General Authorship and Contributorship Clear policies (that allow for transparency around who contributed to the work and in what capacity) should be in place for requirements for authorship and contributorship as well as processes for managing potential disputes
- 30. Information Classification: General Authorship case for discussion Case text • A journal published a paper that is now under investigation by the host institution for misconduct. All authors signed that they agreed authorship and took responsibility for the content of the paper. After the investigations started, an author asked to be removed from authorship. Question • What should the journal do in this situation? • Should the journal permit the author to withdraw, or does agreement to authorship have irrevocable responsibilities?
- 31. Information Classification: General Advice from the Forum • Consider publishing an expression of concern stating that an investigation on the paper is being conducted but not stating that there is an authorship dispute. • Await the outcome of the investigation before making any changes to the paper. • The author signed the agreement which means he consented to publication. This means he has a duty to help with the investigation • The Forum thought that the editor should not allow removal, but that he could give the dissenting author the option of publishing a comment on the published paper.
- 32. Information Classification: General Allegations of misconduct Journals should have a clearly described process for handling allegations, however they are brought to the journal's or publisher’s attention. Journals must take seriously allegations of misconduct pre-publication and post- publication. Policies should include how to handle allegations from whistleblowers.
- 33. Information Classification: General Possible areas of Misconduct Research Misconduct • Informed Consent • Clinical Trial Registration • Animal and field studies • Standards of reporting • Fabrication • Falsification • Wrong ethical approval • Data plagiarism Publication Misconduct • Plagiarism and Text recycling • Image Manipulation • Authorship Issues • Duplicate submission and publication • Conflict of Interest • Fake Peer Review • Salami slicing • Declaration of Helsinki • Institutional Ethical Committee/Institutional Review Board • Local laws and regulations • International Committee of Medical Journal Editors(ICMJE) • Committee on Publication Ethics(COPE) • Journal editorial policies
- 35. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org Plagiarism and copyright infringement
- 36. Information Classification: General Types of plagiarism https://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents/how-should-editors- respond-plagiarism-april-2011
- 39. Information Classification: General Case discussion • The reviewer of a paper contacts the journal to point out that a large part of a review paper was almost an exact copy of a longer review in a different journal. • The editor confirmed this. Although the previous publication was referenced it did not indicate the reproduction of sections of the paper. • The corresponding author is a top researcher at a top institution. The first author is on a research scholarship to the institution. It is likely that the co-authors are unaware of the plagiarism • The editor of Journal A wrote to the corresponding author to point out the apparent plagiarism and to ask for an explanation. • The corresponding author replied, apologising for the error and saying that he would withdraw the paper. He explained that the whole group was at fault for not checking the paper more thoroughly. The author may have found that the language barrier made summarising findings from other papers into his/her own words difficult. There was probably no deliberate intent to copy chunks of the text without acknowledgement as indeed reference was made to the source. The corresponding author would take action regarding present and future submissions from this author. New procedures would also be put into place to prevent a recurrence of this unfortunate event. • The corresponding author felt that a positive aspect of this incident was that it demonstrated the high calibre of the reviewers, and thanked them for doing such an excellent job. The editor was also thanked for seeking the corresponding author’s views on the matter.
- 40. Information Classification: General Discussion/decision • Plagiarism can be accidental • This case again demonstrates that all authors/contributors should take responsibility for the work. Decision The editor accepted the author’s reply as a satisfactory response and decided that no further action should be taken.
- 41. Information Classification: General Conflicts of interest “A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.”
- 46. Information Classification: General Complaints • May arise over the conduct of editors and/or peer reviewers; • Include breaches of confidentiality, undisclosed COI, misuse of information, disputes about decisions, irregularities in editorial processes • Resources include archive of cases, flowcharts and e-learning modules • Principles include • importance of handling cases promptly, transparently, fairly and objectively; • adhering to the Journal’s stated policy; • informing all parties of the process that will be followed and keeping them updated. • use of neutral and professional language and avoiding COI in the investigation process
- 47. Information Classification: General Example of complaints procedure https://china.taylorandfrancis.com/authors/peer-review-appeals-and- complaints-from-authors/
- 48. Information Classification: General publicationethics.org Acknowledgements This presentation is based on previous presentations by COPE council members. Presented by: Deborah Kahn COPE Council Member COPE Trustee COPE China 微信群 因人数已达自动入群限制 请先加Jason Hu好友， 注明身份和COPE 他会邀请您入群。 For membership enquiries please contact: membership@publicationethics.org
Editor's Notes
- We’ve loved working with the elected and co-opted volunteers who give their expertise and time as the 31 members of COPE Council. We have equally loved working with the small and awesome team of staff at COPE. Council members (and COPE’s membership in general) are the people who inspire and lead the work of COPE, and for everyone’s work we’re extremely grateful. Sometimes it is a challenge to find consensus among such diverse groups of people. Where there is no consensus we’re happy to report the differences. Such is the complexity of the publishing ethics world. Preprints, for example, can be divisive. People in some disciplines happily and comfortably embrace preprinting. For others, the risks of preprints are real and outweigh the benefits. Either way, the world still needs guidance on things like preprints from COPE, and we can benefit from exploring the very real differences of opinion (by the way, our Preprints Discussion Document is being revised and will be out soon). Journal teams are another place where we champion diversity. Working with people from across cultures is what we need to address new and complex problems in publishing ethics and research integrity. Like we say above, it’s all always about people.
- This landscape, for all of us in research and research publishing, is one through which we must travel. The question for COPE becomes how does COPE act, and change, to stay true to its mission in publication ethics, and to continue to help the communities and members we serve? For example, what do we think and do about preprints? What do practices like versioning, code sharing, and data sharing mean for the relatively static “version of record” that journals create for researchers? How do stresses and strains on researchers, whether as authors or as peer reviewers, play out and what do we do about the consequences? What new opportunities do we need to embrace? Three things feel like relative constants for COPE. Each is a part of our mission, and each is baked into COPE’s mindset. We deliver resources that support, inform and educate on publication ethics. We lead thinking and advance understanding in publication ethics. We bring a calm, neutral, and professional voice to current debates about publication ethics. So we’ll use these “constants” as we travel this landscape. For our “P” we’ll respond to references to COPE made in the Plan S guidance on implementation with our neutral and professional voice. For our “E” we’ll recognise the new preprint practices that an increasing number of research communities are adopting by completing our guidance on preprints (started in our preprint discussion document). By doing that we’ll promote recognition of more than peer reviewed journal articles as potential research outputs, and perhaps relieve some of the pressure to publish that researchers face. We’ll address concerns about “predatory” practices, building on the discussions we already started at COPE Forum, and leading to presentation at the Sixth World Conference on Research Integrity in June 2019. For our “S” we’ll continue to encourage operational transparency from our members, working with organisations like OASPA, DOAJ, and WAME and with campaigns like Think.Check.Submit. And for our “T” we’ll keep an eye on how technology developments enable open research and open science and what this means for new resources from COPE so we continue support integrity and ethics in research publishing. We’ll keep on moving.
- Changes in authorship (a) Corresponding author requests addition of extra author before publicatio
- Corresponding author requests removal of author before publication
- Request for addition of extra author after publication
- (d) Request for removal of author after publication
- What to do if you suspect ghost, guest or gift authorship (see also flowcharts on Changes in authorship, as such requests may indicate the presence of a ghost or gift author
- Editors cannot police author or contributor listing for every submission but may sometimes have suspicions that an author list is incomplete or includes undeserving (guest or gift) authors. The COPE flowchart on ‘What to do if you suspect ghost, guest or gift authorship’ suggests actions for these situations. The following points are designed to help editors be alert for inappropriate authorship and spot warning signs which may indicate problems. Signs that might indicate authorship problems • Corresponding author seems unable to respond to reviewers’ comments • Changes are made by somebody not on the author list (check Word document properties to see who made the changes but bear in mind there may be an innocent explanation for this, e.g. using a shared computer, or a secretary making changes) • Document properties show the manuscript was drafted by someone not on the author list or properly acknowledged (but see above) • Impossibly prolific author e.g. of review articles/opinion pieces (check also for redundant/overlapping publication) (this may be detected by a Medline or Google search using the author’s name) • Several similar review articles/editorials/opinion pieces have been published under different author names (this may be detected by a Medline or Google search using the article title or key words) • Role missing from list of contributors (e.g. it appears that none of the named authors were responsible for analysing the data or drafting the paper) • Unfeasibly long or short author list (e.g. a simple case report with a dozen authors or a randomised trial with a single author) • Industry-funded study with no authors from sponsor company (this may be legitimate, but may also mean deserving authors have been omitted; reviewing the protocol may help determine the role of employees – see Gotzsche et al. and commentary by Wager)
- COPE has an Wechat group called COPE China, however it only allow first 100 members to join by scanning QR code, later members have to be invited into the group. if you have interest to join this group, please connect with Jason Hu, COPE’s immediate past Council member. He will invite you into the COPE group manually.