COPE aims to define best practice in the ethics of scientific publishing and to assist authors, Editors, editorial board members, readers, owners of journals and publishers. One of the ways in which it fulfils this mission is by the publication of its Code of Conduct (Download PDF, 86 kb) and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Download PDF, 108 kb) .
The principle followed is that editors have a prime duty to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. This must take precedence over their other duties, for example, making sure their publication is readable and profitable (or, at least not a financial burden for the society, academic institution, governmental body or publisher to whom they are responsible). Editors must take final responsibility for everything in the publication they edit. Therefore, it is their duty to do their utmost to identify publication misconduct in submitted or published articles. All members of COPE are expected to abide by Code of Conduct. A mechanism is outlined in the Code to complain about Editors who are COPE members and transgress the Code.
History and context of the COPE guidelines
COPE aims to define best practice in the ethics of scientific publishing and to assist authors, Editors, editorial board members, readers, owners of journals and publishers. COPE first published a set of guidelines in its third year of existence. These guidelines were developed by Philip Fulford, Michael Doherty, Jane Smith, Richard Smith, Fiona Godlee, Peter Wilmshurst, Richard Horton and Michael Farthing, after discussion at the COPE meeting in April 1999. These were published as Guidelines on Good Publication Practice (Download PDF 112 kb) in the Annual Report of 1999 (Download PDF, 4.4 Mb).
In 2004, Richard Smith, the then Chair of COPE and Editor of the BMJ, with Pritpal Tamber and Jeremy Theobald, drafted a Code of Conduct for Editors. The code built on the Guidelines for Good Publication Practice and underwent wide consultation with COPE Council and with editors and publishers. It was published on the first COPE website in November 2004 with an Editorial in the BMJ. The original Code of Conduct (Download PDF, 212 kb) is linked to here for archival purposes.
The code set out standards of good editorial conduct. It called on editors to take seriously their role as guardians of biomedical science by taking all reasonable steps to ensure that allegations of research misconduct are properly investigated. And, it established a mechanism (for COPE members) for dealing with complaints against editors that have not been resolved by the journal’s own complaints procedure. A checklist for the Code was developed and members surveyed for their journals' adherence. The results of this were presented by Fiona Godlee at the 2005 Annual Seminar and published in the Annual Report (Download PDF, 160 kb) of that year. It is COPE's aim to revisit this survey with its current membership and publish up-to-date figures on compliance.
To clarify, update and streamline COPE's advice, the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice were replaced in 2006 by a series of flowcharts designed to help Editors with how to deal with the more common areas of misconduct reported to COPE in the past decade. Originally written by Liz Wager, and redrawn for COPE by Blackwell Publishing, they were launched November 2006.
The Code of Conduct was reorganised and updated by COPE Council in September 2007 and a further 'gold standard' of best practice was developed. The Code of Conduct was designed to provide a set of minimum standards to which all COPE members are expected to adhere. The Best Practice Guidelines are more aspirational and were developed in response to requests from editors for guidance about a wide range of increasingly complex ethical issues. Although COPE expects all members to adhere to the Code of Conduct, we realise that editors may not be able to implement all the Best Practice recommendations immediately, but we hope that our suggestions will identify aspects of journal policy and practice that should be reviewed and that the guidelines will form the basis for periodic journal audits.
The first draft of these guidelines was prepared by Liz Wager. They were then developed following discussion with the COPE Council (including contributions from Tim Albert, Virginia Barbour, Trish Groves, Charlotte Haug, Sabine Kleinert, Harvey Marcovitch, Margaret Rees, Pritpal Tamber, Jeremy Theobald and Steve Yentis). They were presented for discussion at the COPE Seminar in March 2008 and published when this website went live in October 2008.