In January, we published a letter in COPE Digest where we recognised that, as ethical issues change and evolve, so must COPE. We thus affirmed our commitment to reviewing a number of our processes to ensure they are fit for purpose. In this letter we give a brief update on progress in these areas.
1. We committed to working and collaborating with individuals and organisations across the ecosystem to try and improve the way that misconduct is detected and dealt with so that the research record can be protected and trusted. We strongly believe that only by working together can we raise awareness of these issues, promote high standards of ethical behaviour, and attempt to produce guidance and advice that supports changes in behaviour, policies and processes. During 2023 we have taken active steps in this area. Earlier this month COPE and STM organised the UNITED2ACT Summit on the issues of paper mills with the intention of producing concrete actions which will generate real change – consisting of specially invited guests with a varied background, more on this will be published very shortly! We have also convened a small working group consisting of four COPE Council Members, three editor-in-chiefs from COPE member journals, plus a member of the community from outside COPE’s membership. While this group is looking very specifically at providing recommendations for guidance in the area of RCTS in medicine, any guidance produced will likely be applicable to other types of published articles and disciplines.
2. We committed to surveying not only our members but also others with an interest in publication ethics, to receive input into what you think COPE’s priorities should be for the next three years. We have circulated a member survey and will be following that with a survey dedicated to hearing from others within the community. Finally, COPE Trustees, Council and staff will shortly be meeting at our annual ‘retreat’ where many of the discussions will centre on the possible future direction of COPE.
3. We committed to reviewing the remit of the Facilitation and Integrity subcommittee. We have formed a working group of Council Members and held an inaugural meeting to outline some of the issues - as seen both internally within COPE and externally among both the membership and wider community. We will be continuing the conversation as a full Council at our annual retreat next month to agree a direction which the working group will consider on how to take forward.
4. We committed to reviewing and evaluating our membership assessment process. An extremely rigorous and extensive process, administered by a Senior Membership Administrator with decision making distributed among a small group of volunteer Council Members. Conflicts arise between our role in ensuring that high standards are met, and that we are not admitting unethical journals, as well as supporting well-meaning journals in helping them to reach the high standards required. Our current assessment process tends to see a more positive outcome for journals in the ‘global north’ – which is clearly counter to our stated objective of providing more support and education to regions where there is a need for guidance and education. Reviewing this process will go some way to resolving this inequity as well as enabling us to better support both new members and existing members to ensure they are following ethical practices after they have been accepted as COPE members. Over the past few months we have been compiling data and research into the process and are meeting as a small working group in June to determine the actions that we now need to move forward to improve this process.
COPE is strongly committed to ensuring that we are able to support both members and the wider community with the issues they face and the activities we have described above, among many others, will go some way to ensuring we have the right framework in place to enable us to do this effectively.
Dan Kulp, COPE Chair
Nancy Chesheir COPE Vice-Chair
Natalie Ridgeway, COPE Executive Officer
COPE Digest newsletter
Read COPE Digest newsletter May 2023. New guidance has been released on "Best practices for guest-edited collections", and COPE will host a Forum discussion on the topic in July - the Forum is now open to Members to register.