Brieflands expertly handles ethical challenges in STM publishing, from authorship issues and plagiarism to liaising with COPE and managing retractions.
Consulting on Ethics in Publications
Ethical challenges are the moments that decide a journal's reputation — and mishandling one costs more than the incident itself. Brieflands, a COPE member, treats every concern as a significant risk to the journal's integrity and handles cases across all publication phases: before publication, during review, and after publication.
Facing an ethics case, or want to prevent one?
Whether it is a live allegation or a policy you want in place before you need it, our team can help — confidentially. Priced by custom quotation.
What we handle
Every case is worked according to rigorous ethical and official standards, following COPE flowcharts and best practices.
Authorship issues and data fabrication
Guest authorship (naming authors who did not contribute significantly), gift authorship (authorship granted as a favour), and data fabrication — identified, investigated, and prevented, so the authenticity of the research record holds.
Plagiarism
Advanced detection tools plus guidance on addressing and rectifying plagiarism effectively, based on the COPE flowcharts — see also our plagiarism control service.
Copyright disputes
Disputes over copyright infringement navigated with expertise in copyright law and publishing agreements, protecting intellectual property rights on all sides.
Withdrawals and retractions
Where an article must be withdrawn or retracted — for error, ethical breach, or other significant issues — we manage the process transparently and responsibly, keeping the publication record intact.
Peer review problems
Bias, conflicts of interest, and delays in review handled so the process stays fair, unbiased, and efficient — upholding the standard of the journal.
Coverage across the publication lifecycle
Why this matters to indexers. DOAJ, Scopus, and PubMed Central all require a clearly stated — and actually practised — publication ethics and malpractice policy. A journal that handles its first misconduct case badly can lose an index over it; a journal with COPE-based procedures in place rarely gets to that point.