Guidance

Background On occasion a journal may get not one, but a series of complaints from the same source. Complaints may be directed at an author, an editor, or the journal in general. If these complaints turn out to be well founded, investigations should proceed as warranted. However, there are also cases where a complainant makes repeated allegations against a journal, editor, or author that…

The COPE authorship discussion document introduces issues and aims to stimulate discussion around authorship. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate. Authorship can refer to individuals or groups that create an idea or develop the publication that disseminates that intellectual or creative work; however, appropriately acknowledging roles and contributions is not always a…

Introduction Traditionally, theses for higher degrees were published by universities in hard copy only. Now increasingly, these are also archived and may be made freely available via university repositories. They may or may not have associated licenses such as those from Creative Commons which also allow reuse. Questions have arisen at COPE forums and other venues…

The COPE citation manipulation discussion document defines the key issues and existing solutions around unethical citation practices. COPE welcomes comments which add to this ongoing debate. Manipulative citation is characterised by behaviours intended to inflate citation counts for personal gain, such as: excessive self-citation of an authors’ own work, excessive citation to the journal…

Data sharing is increasingly viewed as an essential step in improving research transparency and reproducibility (Taichman et al, 2016; Vickers, 2006). There has been a lot of discussion on the imperative for data sharing in the biomedical arena, particularly of publically funded research. As a result, there are many disciplines where proposals for data sharing are being discussed. Publis…

Authors in any subject area have always had a number of potential publications to choose from when they decide that they want to publish their research. As well as subscription journals to pick from, the increasing number of Open Access models has meant that the choices for authors are expanding all the time. A new type of publication that has arisen from the OA movement is the European Geoscie…

Introduction Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests (COIs)) are ubiquitous. One definition is as follows “A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of…

Two trends have recently come together within scholarly publication; open review, and the desire to give credit to reviewers. At the convergence are organizations like Publons and Academic Karma who wish to openly acknowledge the work of peer-reviewers by recording, not only the amount, but also, in some circumstances, the content of individuals’ peer-review activity. Academics may view service…

  This COPE discussion document introduces issues around competing interests/conflicts of interest and describes practical issues which might occur when handling cases. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate. Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests - COIs) may arise during research, writing, and publication processes, and can be briefly defined as…

Summary This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to plagiarism. Different types of plagiarism are described in terms of their: extent, originality of the copied material, context, referencing, intention, author seniority, and language. Journal responses to plagiarism are also described including: educating authors, contacting authors’ inst…

The COPE predatory publishing discussion document introduces issues, and analyses potential solutions, around predatory publications. COPE welcomes comments which add to this ongoing debate. Common features of the phenomenon include deception and lack of quality controls, and there are a range of warning signs to look for when assessing a journal. Problems for authors, readers, and other…

The COPE preprints discussion document addresses how preprints serve research communities, with guidance on navigating the ethical challenges and opportunities presented to journal editors. COPE welcomes comments which add to this ongoing debate. The benefits of preprints are addressed such as accelerating research communication and establishing precedence; giving editors opportunities t…

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about how editors should respond to emails from whistle blowers. We encourage journal editors and publishers to comment (whether or not they are COPE members), and also welcome comments from researchers/authors and academic institutions. Please send us comments. http://publicationethics.org/contact-us

This paper aims to stimulate discussion about the sharing of information among editors-in-chief regarding possible misconduct in their journals. This guidance has been drafted following a COPE Discussion Forum, in the wake of a number of high profile cases of research misconduct in which the sharing of information between the relevant editors-inchief (EiCs) was crucial to the final settlement o…

Introduction Two trends have recently come together within scholarly publication: open peer review and the desire to give recognition to the work peer reviewers do. At the convergence are organisations like Publons and Academic Karma who wish to openly acknowledge the work of peer reviewers by recording, not only the amount, but also, in some circumstances, the content o…