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Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2022

Welcome to our annual edition of Digest celebrating Peer Review Week (19-23 September). This year’s theme is “Research Integrity: Creating and supporting trust in research”.

As part of Peer Review Week, COPE is hosting a webinar on managing paper mills. We reported on the latest news concerning the problem of paper mills in August, and our forthcoming webinar addresses the problem, with speakers sharing their experience and suggesting practical steps for managing paper mills. As I write this, we have just a few spaces left; this is your last chance to register if you haven’t already.

During Peer Review Week there is a full schedule of webinars, videos, podcasts and blogs that you can take part in. Several members of COPE Council members have been invited to speak at various events:

  • Jigisha Patel is on the panel of CSE’s webinar “Research integrity in publishing”
  • Deborah Poff is part of the Aries Systems webinar panel “Research Integrity: Creating and Supporting Trust in Research”
  • Stephanie Kinnan and Michael Wise will speak at the Scholastica event on plagiarism detection in the evolving publishing landscape.

COPE, DOAJ, OASPA and WAME have launched a new edition of the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. This latest version provides greater depth and clarity for today's publishing environment. We believe that these practices are fully achievable by all scholarly journals, regardless of size, resource, geography or discipline, and we encourage authors and anyone else who is unfamiliar with a journal to use these criteria in assessing a journal. The Principles of Transparency are central to COPE’s membership criteria. 

At our seminar in May, I introduced COPE membership for universities and research institutes. Initially we are reaching out to a small group of research universities and institutions to be the inaugural members of COPE, and we are delighted to announce the first of those university members who have joined our publication ethics community. Welcome to The University of Hong Kong, University College London (UCL), and the University of Glasgow. We are pleased by the interest we have received from institutions around the world and fully welcome their participation in future conversations around publication ethics.

So, once again, enjoy Peer Review Week and I hope to see you at many of the events.

Dan Kulp, COPE Chair