COPE provides leadership in thinking on publication ethics and practical resources to educate and support members, and offers a professional voice in current debates.
Systematic manipulation of the publishing process via 'paper mills' is a significant, and growing, problem. At the COPE Forum we discussed ways in which it is possible to detect these papers, and how to deal with them on individual and wider scales.
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.
COPE news
This discussion document introduces issues, and analyses potential solutions, around predatory publications. We welcome feedback and comments to continue this live and ongoing debate.
New research 'Data sharing policies in scholarly publications: interdisciplinary comparisons' gives an insightful assessment of current preferences for data sharing processes and platform solutions across different disciplines.
Read the latest publication ethics new, gathered by COPE, with articles on retractions, research integrity, diversity, peer review, current challenges in the publishing industry and more.
Matt Hodgkinson, COPE Council member, is exploring the ethics of citations in a session at the ISTME European virtual event 19 & 20 November.
Guidance & discussion
We invited speakers from the Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP) to our August webinar, to hear about their latest findings, and the ethical and practical issues involved in establishing good practice and effective policy. The recording is now available, plus questions we couldn't get to during the webinar which have since been answered by the TRRP team.
An update on predatory publishing developments in 2020 is the topic of discussion in this issue of Digest.
"A journal’s duty is to maintain the quality of its published content". Read more about how to maintain this principle while a reader continues to raise concerns after the journal has extensively investigated.
We bring together support and guidance on issues that have come about during this crisis. The posts include articles on how authors, editors and reviewers are handling their work during this period and guidelines developed in response to the changing environment and workflow.