My initial introduction to COPE many years ago occurred when, as an editor of a peer reviewed journal, a reviewer called to my attention, a blatant example of fabrication in a manuscript in which years and volumes of references had been altered to make them more current. I contacted COPE, presented the case at a Forum, and received excellent advice and consultation. This ultimately resulted in numerous retractions of manuscripts published by this researcher, across three journals. A university office of research integrity became involved since the published papers involved falsified research results in government funded studies. A time consuming, difficult process, I learned much about post publication discussion and questions, the topic of this month’s COPE Digest. I also began to appreciate COPE and all the help it could offer for situations like mine.
This year’s issues of Digest have reflected COPE’s 10 Core Practices. COPE has extensive resources dealing with this tenth and final Core Practice (link) Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections. All deal with the complexities of post-publication issues including correcting, revising, or retracting manuscripts post-publication. This has been an important point of discussion for COPE and continues to be the topic of many cases submitted by members.
One of COPE's strategic aims is to ensure that we enhance our resources for editors of journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences. With this in mind we will be carrying out some research over the next couple of months, including focus groups and a web based survey. If you would be interested in getting your voice heard, please register your interest here."
And finally, we want to welcome four new Council members: Timothy Devinney from Leeds, Gavin Swanson from CUP, Laura Wilson from Emerald and Daoxin Yin from China. Adrian Ziderman has been re-elected for a second term to COPE Council. We welcome them all as we move into the next year.
Read November Digest: Post-Publication Discussions and Corrections
COPE co-Chair Geri Pearson
