COPE provides leadership in thinking on publication ethics and practical resources to educate and support members, and offers a professional voice in current debates.
Newsletter
Text recycling (also known as self-plagiarism) is the focus on our latest COPE Digest. We're holding a text recycling webinar in August with speakers from the Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP). Read more about TRRP, a guest article about text recycling in philosophy and a case discussion bringing together advice and guidance from COPE.
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.
Events & discussion
COPE members: join us when we will hear from the Text Recycling Research Project (TRRP) team at our webinar on 7 August 2020. TRRP aims to better understand this practice and support the development of more clear and consistent policies. They will present an overview of their research to date then move on to discuss the ethical and practical issues involved in establishing effective policy.
Michael Dougherty, holder of the Sr. Ruth Caspar Chair in Philosophy at Ohio Dominican University, has written two books on scholarly plagiarism. In this article Michael writes about the problems self-plagiarism generates in philosophy and related fields, and how to correct the record.
This month's case discussion focuses on suspected self-plagiarism and potential salami slicing in a published article. What can the editor do? Should the editor tell the other journal?
After publication an author admits failure to credit other authors and submits a corrected author list. Subsequent disagreement on author order leads to a request by the other authors for retraction. Read more with advice from COPE members.
News & guidance
Is it acceptable to edit peer reviews and, if so, when? We shared a survey asking for your views. About 15% said they believed it is never acceptable for an editor to edit a peer reviewer’s comments and about 25% said they believed it is never acceptable to suppress a complete review.
We bring together support and guidance on issues that have come about during this crisis. The collection includes 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.
Issues around data and/or fabrication were cited as ethics issues education journal editors were least confident in addressing in COPE's study. Read more about the major and most serious issues this group of editors face.
Read the latest publication ethics news with articles on text recycling, peer review, research integrity and preprints.