COPE provides leadership in thinking on publication ethics and practical resources to educate and support members, and offers a professional voice in current debates.
Three of the most read COPE publication ethics cases on our website in 2020 were around authorship issues. See the top five cases of the year and a reminder of the 2020 case discussions with further analysis on cases and useful resources.
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
COPE's Authorship DIscussion Document provides practical advice on addressing the most common issues around authorship with specific guidance where there seems to be consensus and asking for further comments from COPE members in some areas.
We have corrected an inaccurate statement that appeared in our December Digest letter, regarding policy changes of some preprint servers.
Read the latest publication ethics new, gathered by COPE, with articles on diversity and inclusion, predatory publishing, research integrity, peer review, and more.
Matt Hodgkinson was invited to speak at the the ISMTE European Virtual Event, to explore the ethics of citations.
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.
In our final Digest of 2020 we share the most accessed cases and a reminder of the case discussions in 2020. We also introduce new Spanish translations of peer review cases, brought to the COPE Forum, with discussion and advice.
"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.