This past year has been a bumper year for research and
publication misconduct. Woo Suk Hwang’s faked stem cell research in South Korea
has been the most prominent and perhaps the most damaging single case. But there
have been several others reported in medical journals and the media, all
contributing to the sense that science and scientific journals have not got
their houses in order.
Two things at least are at stake: the public’s trust in
biomedical science and, since research feeds into patient care, the public’s
safety. What is COPE’s role in all of this and what has it contributed in 2005?
COPE was established in 1997 as an ad hoc self help group for
medical journal editors. Since then it has grown into a properly constituted
international body of editors seeking to improve the integrity of biomedical
publications. Its members meet six times a year to advise each other on how to
handle anonymised cases that present ethical dilemmas for the editors involved.
The cases and the committee’s advice are posted on COPE’s website, which has now
become a fully searchable resource for anyone interested in publication ethics,
with an extensive archive covering the whole gamut of
issues from redundant publication, undeclared conflicts of interest, authorship
disputes, plagiarism, and data fabrication.
From the start, COPE’s emphasis has been on the misdemeanours
of authors and peer reviewers. But editors behave badly too, or simply make
mistakes. COPE’s Code of Conduct for Editors, launched at the end of 2004,
recognised the need to raise the standards of editorial behaviour by setting out
broad principles of good conduct. These include:
- publishing corrections and apologies where necessary
- retracting fraudulent or erroneous articles
- publishing cogent criticisms from readers
- ensuring research articles conform to ethical guidelines
- keeping editorial and commercial decisions separate
- declaring their own and other people's conflicts of
interest - dealing properly with complaints, and, most onerous of all,
- making all reasonable efforts to ensure that allegations of
misconduct are properly investigated
COPE’s council thought it important to find out how close
editors were to meeting these standards. Our survey of COPE members was not
encouraging [url]. Almost two thirds of respondents had no declared policies on
pursuing research misconduct when it is suspected; six out of 10 had no declared
complaints procedure; half had no published guidance for authors; and one in
eight had no procedures for dealing with competing interests.
This confirms what most editors know all too well: that they
often have few resources available to them and little in the way of back up.
COPE’s role is to empower editors to prioritise best practice in publication
ethics as part of wider efforts to raise standards in biomedical science.
The code of conduct brings with it the offer to act as arbiter
in complaints that journals are unable to resolve. This is turn made us realise
the need for our own arbiter, an ombudsman, to resolve complaints against COPE,
and Richard Green, Honorary Professor of Psychiatry at Imperial College London,
and consultant psychiatrist at Charing Cross Hospital, London, has been
appointed to this role.
COPE will continue to support and advise the growing number of
journal editors who are joining as members. It will also continue to advocate
good practice internationally in biomedical publication and to support research
and education into issues relating to publication misconduct.
I hope you will find this report and the website useful. And
if you are not already a member, I hope too that you will consider joining, and
that you will let us know what else you think COPE should be doing to protect
the integrity of biomedical publication.
Fiona Godlee
Editor, BMJ
Chair of COPE 2003-5