New COPE council members appointed
COPE is very pleased to announce the appointment of two new COPE council members, Christopher Leonard and Muhammad Irfan. Following our recent call for nominations, two candidates were short-listed by council following an interview. In accordance with our regulations, where the number of short-listed candidates is equal to the number of vacancies (ie, the candidates are unopposed), the nominees are appointed if approved by a majority of the members of Council. Hence Christopher Leonard and Muhammad Irfan were appointed to COPE council following approval of COPE Council.
Christopher Leonard is the Editorial Director at the Doha-based academic publisher, Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals. Muhammad Irfan is currently working as Head, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, Peshawar Medical College, Peshawar, Pakistan, and is the managing editor of the Journal of Postgraduate Medical Institute, Peshawar.
We very much look forward to working with them.
New council members Christopher Leonard (left) and Muhammad Irfan (right).
Text recycling guidelines for editors
A common issue encountered by editors is overlap of text with an author’s own previously published work, particularly with the increasing use of plagiarism detection software. This practice is known as ‘text recycling’ (also sometimes referred to as ‘self-plagiarism’). Opinions on the acceptability of text recycling vary greatly and it can be a challenge for editors to know how to deal with it once it has been identified.
In response to this uncertainty, the biology and medical editors at BioMed Central, in collaboration with COPE, have developed a set of guidelines to help editors handle cases of text recycling. During the development of these guidelines, a wide range of viewpoints were sought from Editors from a variety of fields, including discussion at a COPE forum (http://publicationethics.org/resources/discussion-documents).
The guidelines cover how to deal with text recycling both in a submitted manuscript and a published article and include situations where text recycling may be acceptable as well as those where it is unlikely to be. For example, it may be entirely appropriate to have overlap in a methods section of a research article (referring to a previously used method) with citation of the original article. However, undisclosed overlap, or overlap in the results, discussion, or conclusions is unlikely to be acceptable.
While individuals will naturally have different views on the acceptability of text recycling, the aim of these guidelines is to provide a summary of the key points for editors to consider when handling particular cases of text recycling.
COPE Council strategy day
COPE Council held a strategy day on 17 July to discuss our plans and strategy for next year specifically, but also for the next 3–5 years.
We reviewed our governance and, among other issues, agreed a new structure for COPE council with more formalised subcommittees.
We reinforced our intention to be at the forefront of the debate on publication ethics by providing education, support and a place our members can debate publication ethics; we affirmed that our role is not to police publication ethics.
Many seminars and Forums, alone and in collaboration with other organisations, are planned, including one focusing on issues related to the social sciences. We will also be conducting a major survey of our members, so watch out for that. This and other events coming up will be communicated to the membership over the next few months.
COPE council members at the recent strategy day.