Each month, COPE Council members find and share publication ethics news. March and April news includes articles on research integrity, ethical oversight, diversity equity, inclusion and more.
Research assessment
The European Commission is looking for expressions of interest from funders, research institutions, learned societies and other relevant bodies to join a coalition on reforming research assessment.
Ethical oversight
What does a Director of Research Integrity do? An interview with Sabina Alam of T&F.
Clarivate has a 1-hour online course for editors, authors and peer reviewers about ethical issues in research.
Research integrity
Research Integrity on the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI) discusses some of the guidance developed from previous WCRIs.
What are the factors authors consider when choosing where to submit their manuscripts?
Diversity, equity, inclusion
If sustainable development works towards a just and ethical society, how does it deal with the Global North-South divide in the ethics of scholarly publishing?
Journal of Scholarly Publishing is welcoming submissions for a special issue on diversity, equity, inclusivity and accessibility in policies and practices in scholarly publishing.
Desk-rejection without review is described in this study as a potential source of bias against women authors and research related to women's health.
Retractions and corrections
Piotr Rzymski makes the case for hard retraction in cases of extremely flawed science.
To address concerns that the correction of published record is too slow to be effective, specific steps to remedy the academia's willingness and ability to do so are offered in this article.
Journal management
Cross-Ref is seeking feedback on a proposed registry intended to encourage best practice around editorial boards' information and governance.
Global research
LingProf by linguistic scholars is a 6-month pilot, founded to help proofread manuscripts by non-native English speakers.
Publication ethics
Journals that cease publications in this survey were largely in AHSS disciplines and stopped due to lack of funding and support, quality papers, reliance on volunteerism. Lack of archiving plans is problematic.
The news is edited by COPE Trustees Deborah Kahn and Nancy Chescheir