At the beginning of 2017, our newsletter reflects our priorities. At the end of 2016 I reflected on the many challenges we saw and the need to respond. This month, I’d like to reflect on our approach.
As the newsletter highlights every month, we provide a constant source of advice, distilled from discussions among our membership on cases (this month on authorship) and on specific topics (this month on the ever-thorny issue of conflicts of interest) at our regular forums. This advice and the way it is provided reinforces our methodology and our ethos: we are a membership organisation of editors, working collectively (as shown in our calls for comments on working documents) to improve publication and, by extension, research ethics across academia. It complements the other advice we provide, via a variety of mechanisms, and as the new Croatian flowcharts emphasise, in a wide variety of languages.
Since we are a membership organisation, it is critical that our priorities reflect the priorities of our membership. Last year we published our strategy and later this month we are publishing the report from the membership survey that provided critical input into that survey. We took this survey very seriously and in reporting it we also aim to show how seriously we take transparency in how we work.
Finally, as we look ahead to 2017, the 20th anniversary of COPE and the seminar planned for that time, it is worth reflecting on the bigger picture that COPE seeks to influence. When it was first founded, it is hard to imagine that it would grow to more than 11,000 members, nor perhaps that the issues we work on would prove so intractable. As we have come to realise, these issues provoke strong feelings and in many cases become personal. We see our role as not only helping provide specific guidance but also to be part of the increasing need for professionalism in publishing. By working across the whole range of publishing models and specialties, we provide a unique collaboration in an area where collaboration is needed more than ever. It’s not possible to do this without the hard work of the many COPE council members and trustees and our skilled staff, and as we start a new year, I’d like to personally thank them all.
Finally, we will be reshaping the newsletter over the next few months and welcome feedback on it. At this time, I’d also like to thank our editor, Professor Margaret Rees, who has expertly overseen this newsletter for many editions and is now stepping down. Margaret is a former COPE Trustee and Council Member and also served as COPE co-secretary from 2011 to 2014. Her enthusiasm and expert insight will be much missed.
With best wishes for 2017 from all at COPE
Ginny Barbour, COPE Chair