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Welcome to the March issue of COPE Digest.
This is the last monthly edition of Digest. From April, Digest will be bimonthly. A new publication, for members only, will be published in alternate months, providing more in-depth exploration of resources, discussions and events that are relevant for our membership. Look out for the first issue of our new format next month. As always, we welcome your feedback on this new information sharing and your ideas of what you would like to see.
This issue of Digest includes updates on two projects in which COPE has been participating. Cary Moskovitz gives an update on the Text Recycling Research Project, previously presented to COPE members at a seminar and a webinar. Also, COPE has been involved in the University of Illinois Sloan Funded Project on reducing citations of retracted publications “Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: shaping a research and implementation agenda” (RISRS) project. COPE is currently engaged in the retraction taxonomy aspect of the project. RISRS is seeking feedback on its recommendations for reducing the inadvertent citation of retracted citation.
Tuesday 23 March is COPE’s next Forum. The topic for this forum is “Ethical considerations around book publishing”. COPE has convened a task force of publishers dealing with issues related to books. Initially, we have limited our scope to books, which include monographs, both sole authored and co-authored, and anthologies, which have a multiplicity of approaches in terms of publishing practices. COPE is interested in providing advice and guidance on book publishing which raises a number of issues, some of which are different from those experienced in journal publishing. For this initial stage, we have excluded conference proceedings, given the broad range of practices with respect to the publication of the proceedings from conferences. Ultimately, we do intend to return to the question of conference publications. Please join us and share your experiences and questions about publication ethics issues which arise in book publishing.
In this issue, Iratxe Puebla, COPE’s Facilitation & Integrity Office, summarises an issue that was raised by an author who published in a COPE member journal some years ago. It describes how the concern was resolved when COPE, the publisher and the author worked together.
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COPE has established a working group to develop guidance on author name changes...
READ MORE >
COPE Chair Deborah Poff
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ISSUE OF CONCERN: NAME CHANGES
An issue of concern was submitted to COPE via the Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee, which facilitates the review of concerns that authors or readers have about COPE member journals.
A few years ago, a transgender author had contacted a journal to request an update to the author list in a publication. The article had been published several years before; the author had since transitioned and they wished to have the author line updated to reflect their legal name and prevent the discrepancy in names from outing them as transgender. The author was not satisfied with the journal’s initial response to their request and raised the matter to COPE.
As per its remit, the Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee approached the journal for comments. The journal had indicated to the author that the name was correct at the time of publication, and they did not usually make corrections to the record for name changes happening later. The journal also indicated that they had consulted COPE in relation to the request, and COPE had supported their position and suggested that a note mentioning the name change could be added to the article. The journal offered to issue a publisher’s note outlining the name change and noted that agreement from all co-authors would be sought before the change was implemented.
The author expressed concern about the requirement to obtain approval by the co-authors; they viewed this as inappropriate. Bearing in mind the sensitivity of the request, the Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee recommended that the journal pursue a publisher’s note that mentioned there was a change to the article after publication without specifying the details of the change. The subcommittee also noted that such a notification could proceed without requiring consent from the co-authors.
READ MORE >
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UPDATE ON THE TEXT RECYCLING PROJECT
Cary Moskovitz, Duke University in Durham, NC, USA
The Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP) has three major aims: to better understand the ethical, practical, and legal aspects of text recycling in STEM fields; to help build consensus among stakeholders; and to promote ethical and appropriate practice. TRRP has published a number of research articles in the past year:
- Standardizing terminology for text recycling in research writing
- Text recycling in STEM: A text-analytic study of recent NSF-sponsored research reports
- Reuse in STEM Research Writing: Rhetorical and Practical Considerations and Challenges
- Text recycling in STEM research: An exploratory investigation of expert and novice beliefs and attitudes
Read more to find out about the new guidelines, policies and educational materials TRRP is now working on, drawing on what they have learned from their research.
READ MORE >
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REDUCING THE INADVERTENT SPREAD OF RETRACTED SCIENCE
Dr Jodi Schneider, School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois
COPE recommendations say that "Prompt retraction should minimise the number of researchers who cite the erroneous work, act on its findings, or draw incorrect conclusions". However, post-retraction citation and use of retracted research remains common, and most post-retraction citation appears to be inadvertent (Hsiao & Schneider, manuscript). Science Magazine recently analysed 200 post-retraction citations to two high profile COVID-19 papers published in May 2020 and retracted in June 2020: over half of the citations did not mention the retraction; they noted that publishers and editors were "caught by surprise" and many do not systematically check for retraction or post-publication corrections (Piller, 2021).
The “Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: shaping a research and implementation agenda” (RISRS) project has recommendations for reducing inadvertent citation of retracted citation. COPE is involved in the working group on retraction taxonomy.
Find out more about the RISRS top level recommendations and add your feedback.
READ MORE & FEEDBACK >
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LATEST PUBLICATION ETHICS NEWS
This month the news includes articles on text recycling, diversity and inclusion, preprints, and more.
- Many journals have now adopted policies to allow for anonymous name changes.
- A 3-level self-evaluation of image reproducibility is promoted to avoid the problem of image manipulation in published research.
- The Royal Society of Chemistry has announced a cross-publisher Diversity & Inclusion initiative to drive change in scholarly publishing.
READ MORE >
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COPE FORUM
Tuesday 23 March, 2-3.30pm (GMT)
(COPE Members Only)
The Forum will follow the usual format where we have a discussion topic, followed by cases presented for discussion and advice from members participating in the Forum.
Discussion topic: Ethical considerations around book publishing
Periodically, COPE gets requests for the development of discussion documents, guidance and flowcharts on publication ethics issues related to book publication. Many of our members publish both journals and books, and a number of these members reference COPE guidance on journal publishing and ethics as providing useful information on particular topics related to research and publication ethics.
- Are most of the publication ethics issues the same in book publishing as in journal publishing (eg, plagiarism, authorship, ethics approval, consent, peer review)?
- Are there particular problems when (eg, how to retract a full book? How to retract part of a book – a single chapter within an anthology/edited volume?).
- Should proposal review count as peer review? Does selected chapter review count as peer review?
- Do we need to develop a taxonomy of book publishing practices and parallel advice on publishing ethics in books?
- Where do we go from here?
- What are the particulars of ethics in book publishing? Does book publishing require independent consideration with respect to publication ethics?
Please leave your comments, whether or not you are planning on joining the meeting. Anyone (members and non-members) can comment on the discussion topic on our website before it is discussed at the Forum.
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Visit our events page to read more about upcoming events which include discussions on publication ethics issues.
- International Society for Medical Publication Professionals (ISMPP) Annual Meeting, 12-14 April 2021
- STM Spring Conference, 27-29 April 2021
- Society for Scholarly Publishing Annual Meeting "Charting a New Course from Chaos to Innovation", 24-27 May 2021
- 7th World Conference on Research Integrity, 30 May-2 June 2021
EVENTS >
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COPE Digest Editor:
Nancy C Chescheir, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Obstetrics and Gynecology
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