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COPE Members

COPE Forum
Friday 4 September 2020

September Forum

COPE members

Our September Forum will follow the usual format where we discuss a topic brought to our attention by members, followed by members' cases presented for discussion and advice from all those participating in the Forum. This month the discussion topic is systematic manipulation of the publication process via "paper mills".

Deadline to submit a case: Friday 28 August

COPE members

Do you have a publication ethics issue and need help with the next steps? Submit your case for discussion among the participants of the Forum. The notes in each case reflect the discussion that takes place and are anonymised when added to the COPE website.

Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via "paper mills"


Increasingly, across the research publishing landscape, large scale manipulations of the publication process are being seen. The production of fraudulent papers at scale via alleged ‘paper mills’ is one such manipulation. 

Paper mills are profit oriented, unofficial and potentially illegal organisations that produce and sell fraudulent manuscripts that seem to resemble genuine research. They may also handle the administration of submitting the article to journals for review and sell authorship to researchers once the article is accepted for publication. Indications that manuscripts may be produced by a paper mill are more readily detected at scale as they may be similar in layout, experimental approach and have similar images or figures.

Questions 
  • While publishers and editors can handle individual papers on a case-by-case basis, how do we tackle the bigger issues at play?
  • What can publishers do to improve the screening processes to detect these problems earlier? 
  • Are there key author declarations that could be suggested that researchers make?
  • Even for journals which do not have a mandatory data sharing policy, should authors be asked to store their original data/images in open or institutional repositories so that data are at least available on request?
This will be discussed at the start of the Forum with guest speaker Elisabeth Bik (Microbiome, and Science Integrity Consultant).

Whether or not you plan to attend the Forum, please leave your comments on the issue.

READ MORE AND COMMENT >

Deadline to register: Thursday 3 September

You must register in advance to attend the Forum.
Warmest regards

Linda Gough
COPE Administrator
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