Other than the Code of Conduct (Download PDF, 86 kb) and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Download PDF, 108 kb), COPE has written guidelines on the following:
Guidelines for retracting articles
The COPE guidelines on retraction, issued 1 December 2009, can be downloaded here. Download PDF (49 kb). © 2009 COPE. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals
The journals of Learned Societies are an important part of the scientific literature. Their management should be of the highest quality and ethically sound. Download PDF (38 kb)
Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations
Regulations regarding what type of study requires ethical approval vary worldwide. In some countries all studies require ethical approval but in others not. This may lead to submission to journals of manuscripts relating to such studies that do not satisfy the journal’s normal requirement for independent ethical approval, and rejection of the manuscript because of misunderstanding of local regulations. This guidance has therefore been produced by COPE as an aid to journal editorial teams who are required to review such manuscripts. Download PDF ( 59 kb)
How to handle authorship disputes:a guide for new researchers
We have written this document to help new researchers prevent and resolve authorship problems.
In particular it provides:
- suggestions for good authorship practice that should reduce the incidence of such dilemmas,
- advice on what to do when authorship problems do arise, and
- a glossary of key concepts in authorship, with some reading lists and websites for those who wish to take this further.