Guidance

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

…of multiple citations of their own work, 2019 Citations: link, locate, discover, connect Guest article, August 2018 Self-citation: where's the line? Forum discussion, November…

…_dd_a4_pred_publishing_nov19_screenaw.pdf" target="_blank">Predatory Publishing Discussion Document (PDF) Related resource Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here? COPE Forum discussion, December 2020 Your feedback COPE welcomes feedback from publishers, journal editors, reviewers, researchers,…

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…

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.

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…

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…

  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…

…that turn out to be baseless. Examples of multiple complaints include: Complaints may deal with matters outside the remit of the journal, such as personal complaints against an author or editor. Repeated complaints may be trivial or inaccurate allegations about published articles. COPE has seen cases where repeated allegations were made regarding plagiarism, but evidence presented…

…institutions, issuing corrections, and issuing retractions. The current COPE flowcharts recommend different responses to major and minor plagiarism. Possible, more detailed, definitions of these are proposed for discussion. Decisions about when to use text-matching software are also outlined. The appendix describes other systems for classifying plagiarism and links to related documents and resources.

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…