COPE Workshop at 4th WCRI, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 31, 2015
COPE will be leading a workshop at the 4th World Conference on Research Integrity in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on publication ethics for editors, members of editorial boards and reviewers on Sunday May 31, 2015. This is an excellent opportunity for participants to discuss current trends in publication ethics, learn about how to handle possible misconduct and improve the quality of their reviews. The workshop is targeted at novice and experienced editors, editorial board members and reviewers.
Full details on the workshop are available at http://wcri2015.org/4WCRI_COPE%20Session_Workshop.pdf
Register now: https://ci.eventus.com.br/ci/Default.asp?siteorigem=wcri2015&lang=en
COPE is also leading a symposium at the main conference on Wednesday 3 June on “Publication without borders: Ethical challenges in a globalized world” which will be chaired by COPE Vice-chair, Charlotte Haug. Also speaking are council member, Muhammad Irfan, and former council members Behrooz Astaneh, Shiraz, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran, and Rosemary Shinkai, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Brazil. A copy of the full programme for the whole event can be found here: http://wcri2015.org/4WCRI_Program.pdf
COPE European Seminar report
Report from COPE council member Zoe Mullan
COPE’s European Seminar took place in Brussels, Belgium, on April 16 and 17. Following feedback from previous seminars, the event was extended over two days and featured three interactive workshops: a discussion of past cases, a practical session on incorporating COPE guidelines into journal author and reviewer guidelines, and a “design-a-flowchart” session. All three generated a good level of participant interaction, and participants and COPE Council members alike gleaned useful insights to take away with them.
The theme of the Seminar programme was “Weighed and measured: how metrics shape publication (mis)behaviour”. Attendees heard presentations from Altmetrics’ Euan Adie, Elsevier’s Lisa Colledge, and Sarah de Rijcke from Leiden University. Euan Adie introduced Altmetrics as “metrics that aren’t citations”, representing a numerical quantification of attention. Although there is less potential for “gaming the system” than with citations, he nevertheless outlined examples such as authors paying for retweets and discussed how the organisation deals with “suspicious attention”. Lisa Colledge spoke about the issue of self citation by authors and journals, and the temptation to use a journal’s impact factor as a measure of individual article quality. However, she stressed that most abuses stem from reliance on only one metric, and that combination of metrics with other forms of merit-based analysis could still be a useful exercise. Sarah de Rijke concurred. Her ethnographic research on how evaluation shapes biomedical research has revealed concerning issues such as young researchers avoiding collaboration because of the individualised nature of publication impact and huge bonus programmes for researchers who publish in high impact factor journals. She introduced the Leiden Manifesto, which contains ten recommendations to research institutions on the use of metrics in research evaluation.
Finally, a panel discussion with Jonathan Montgomery (whose organisation the Nuffield Council of Bioethics recently released a critical report on the culture of scientific research in the UK), Mike Thelwell (University of Wolverhampton), and COPE Chair Ginny Barbour elicited differing opinions on the merits or otherwise of the UK’s Research Excellence Framework, and the degree to which editors could influence such assessments. Should we be removing all mention of impact factors from our websites and generating support for the other contributions researchers make to journals such as peer review and commentaries? No doubt the discussion will continue…
Delegates at the COPE European Seminar 2015, in Brussels. Photo courtesy of Representation of the State of Hessen to the European Union, Brussels, Belgium. Copyright: Vertretung des Landes Hessen bei der EU.
COPE Chair, Ginny Barbour, opening the COPE European Seminar in Brussels.
Panel discussion at the COPE European Seminar in Brussels, chaired by COPE Treasurer Chris Graf. On the panel, left to right, COPE Chair Ginny Barbour, Jonathan Montgomery, Chair, Health Research Authority and Nuffield Council on Bioethics and Mike Thelwall, University of Wolverhampton, UK.
Registration open for COPE North American Seminar 19 August 2015
Registration is now open for COPE's 6th North American Seminar, which will be held in collaboration with ISMTE (International Society of Managing and Technical Editors), on Wednesday 19 August 2015, at the Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
The theme of this year's European seminar is “Understanding metrics in publishing: use and abuse”. Editors, publishers, authors and all those interested in publication ethics are welcome to attend.
The seminar will include invited talks, in addition to breakout sessions in the afternoon with discussion of cases, and an interactive workshop on "Designing a flowchart"..
The Seminar is free for COPE members, US$300 for non-members and US$150 for ISMTE members who are not members of COPE (and attending only the COPE seminar).
For more information and to register, see the COPE website: http://publicationethics.org/cope-north-american-seminar-2015