9 April 2021
Prevention, education and best practices in publication ethics
COPE’s Facilitation & Integrity subcommittee (F&I) provides a pathway to raise publication ethics concerns about COPE member journals.
The subcommittee aims to facilitate a dialogue between the individual(s) raising the concerns and the journal involved, and to educate members on best practices in publication ethics. The overarching objectives of the subcommittee are to complete an independent review of the process the journal followed to handle the issues of concern raised, and provide guidance on whether there are any actions needed to ensure the journal's procedures align with COPE's Core Practices. The subcommittee considers COPE’s Core Practices as part of its review, and where it is deemed necessary, the subcommittee will recommend changes to the journal’s processes to ensure compliance with the Core Practices. On the rare occasions where concerns are identified with consistent deviation from COPE’s Core Practices, the subcommittee will refer the matter for consideration of further remediation steps within COPE’s sanctions process.
In 2020, COPE received 100 F&I submissions, 57 of which underwent full review by the subcommittee. The subcommittee completed the review of 49 cases, the highest number of concerns reviewed and closed since the process was implemented. A flowchart illustrates the process for handling concerns (PDF).
The concerns raised to F&I reflect the breadth of issues discussed at the COPE Forums, from cases involving author concerns about an editor's decision to retract their article, to concerns about undeclared competing interests, suspected plagiarism, and authorship cases. The range of issues handled also allows the subcommittee to identify areas where further guidance by COPE may be needed. A recent example is the issue of author name changes, which arose in a case submitted to the subcommittee. This is an important topic and a working group within COPE has been developing such guidance, bringing in diverse perspectives from publishers, editors, authors, librarians and beyond.
Iratxe Puebla, Facilitation & Integrity Officer, COPE