The first meeting of COPE took place in April 1997 and was a relatively informal get-together of a group of concerned editors, prompted by Mike Farthing, who in his first year as Editor of Gut, encountered four cases of misconduct and wondered whether this was unusual. At that first meeting it became clear that the group had seen the full spectrum of research misconduct from fraud to authorship disputes and that getting others’ advice and exchanging views on how to deal with these cases was a valuable exercise. Initial exploratory meetings and discussions of anonymised cases were attended by editors of a number of journals, including the BMJ, The Lancet, British Journal of Anaesthesia, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Annals of Rheumatic Diseases, and Journal of Clinical Pathology, and the first open meeting was held in November 1997. “COPE is an experiment”, so wrote Mike Farthing in his first annual report in May 1998, and Richard Smith added “it may not prove useful in the long term, and we will be delighted if it is made unnecessary because the international profession produces an adequate response to research misconduct”.
In 1999, in its second report COPE issued its Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (Download PDF, 112 kb) after broad consultation and workshops at the annual meeting in an attempt to define issues and advice on how to investigate suspected cases. In its early years, COPE established and maintained links with international experts from the Nordic countries, the USA, and bodies, such as the World Association of Medical Editors, the GMC (the UK’s physician licensing body) and the Royal College of Physicians.
By 2000, COPE had over 90 members, had drafted a constitution (Download PDF, 63 kb) setting out a more mature organisation with elected Officers and a Council, and in 2001, Mike Farthing was elected Chair, Richard Smith Vice-Chair, and Alex Williamson Treasurer of COPE. Members started to join from other European countries and some publishers signed on several of their journals. During these years, COPE also continued to push for the establishment of a Council for Research Integrity in the UK.
In 2004, Fiona Godlee took over as Chair and Harvey Marcovitch became Vice-Chair of COPE, and COPE appointed Richard Green as Ombudsman. The Code of Conduct (Download PDF, 212 kb) for Editors was launched and published on COPE’s website. The Code set out the minimum standards to which Editors should strive to adhere and all COPE members were expected to abide by it. By now, COPE’s membership had risen to almost 350.
In 2006, COPE published a series of flowcharts guiding Editors through the steps of due process in dealing with straightforward cases of suspected misconduct. Work started on updating the Code of Conduct and writing the Best Practice Guidelines, an extension of the Code as a gold standard to which to aspire. Harvey Marcovitch took over as Chair of COPE, Sabine Kleinert was elected Vice-Chair and Jeremy Theobald was appointed Treasurer.
During 2007, COPE applied to become a charity and was granted charity status in February 2008. Liz Wager was elected COPE Secretary. International reach continued apace with members now coming from all over the world and regularly calling in by phone for the quarterly Forum meetings from as far as India or the USA. COPE was a major partner in the First World Conference on Research Integrity held in Lisbon in September 2007 and convened by the European Science Foundation, the US Office of Research Integrity and the Portuguese Government.
In 2008, work commenced on a new website which launched in October this year. It includes not only a complete database of members but also of all cases heard by COPE since its inception in 1997, and publishes a blog written by Council members on publication misconduct. This year COPE started to fund research on issues relating to publication misconduct, made plans to publish a newsletter and made presentations of its Officers' lectures available to members, as well as sample letters. COPE also plans to organise an annual seminar in the USA from 2009. An online distance-learning course is being developed, and COPE has also provided its members with an auditing tool for their journals to measure compliance with its updated Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines. COPE’s membership exploded with major publishing houses, such as Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, and Taylor and Francis signing on all their journals. Membership has now increased to over 5000 journals, and COPE has decided to appoint a full-time Operational Director to manage and develop COPE’s expansion as an international organisation.
October 2008