COPE provides leadership in thinking on publication ethics and practical resources to educate and support members, and offers a professional voice in current debates.
Hot topic
Is it ever acceptable for an editor to change the content of a peer review or to quash it altogether?
If so, under what circumstances would this be acceptable?
If not, why not?
Our core practices
Core practices are the policies and practices journals and publishers need, to reach the highest standards in publication ethics. We include cases with advice, guidance for day-to-day practice, education modules and events on topical issues, to support journals and publishers fulfil their policies.
News & guidance
We describe the phenomenon, identify the key issues, describe the impact on the various stakeholders involved, analyse proposed interventions and solutions, and give COPE’s perspective on addressing the problem going forward. Please add your feedback and comments to continue this live and ongoing debate.
In the February issue, we release the COPE Strategy for 2020-2023 and we highlight two cases that tie into the theme of editing peer review comments, also the discussion topic in our March Forum.
New COPE advice for editors on when to consider retractions, how to issue a retraction and what to do when there is inconclusive evidence of a retraction.
New cases recently discussed by #C0PEMembers: reproducibility of methodology; removal of author; authorship dispute; institution recommends retraction.
Events
15 June 2020
The theme of the seminar is “Working together: issues in scholarly research and its publication”, with plenary talks covering text recycling, post-publication corrections and the relationship between research integrity and publication ethics. Editors, publishers, authors and all those interested in publication ethics are welcome to attend.
Is it ever acceptable for an editor to change the content of a peer review or to quash it altogether? If so, under what circumstances would this be acceptable? If not, why not? Join the discussion
2-5 May, 2020
Heather Tierney, is speaking on behalf of COPE as a panellist on the editorial policy ethics clinic, discussing retractions, at the CSE Annual Meeting,
21 February, 2020
Nancy Chescheir, COPE Council, is speaking at this meeting of editors discussing ethics issues in health science publishing.