- News
Paper mills in the news
…scientist at SAGE Publishing, about his preprint Exploratory analysis of text duplication in peer-review reveals peer-review fraud and paper mills, and details of the methods used in the investigation, including how his team uncovered the network of milled papers through suspicious patterns in peer reviews. In April, the IOS Press 35th Anniversary… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair: September 2021
…href="https://osf.io/xp58v/">seeking feedback on these draft recommendations until the end of October. And finally, I would like to welcome Jason Hu back to Council. We are excited to have him rejoining COPE and I am looking forward to introducing more new Council Members in the next Digest. COPE is growing and we continue to welcome a broad diversity… - News
In the news: April 2020
…gender diversity among reviewers and editors to mitigate the perception and reality of bias. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/gh4rv/ The investment bank and financial services company Goldman Sachs recently announced it will no longer take companies public unless they have at least one diverse board member because… - Case
Data availability for vulnerable populations
…its management via institutions and data repositories. Comments reported that journals vary in their attitude to data availability, some encouraging it, others making it mandatory and others still leaving it to the discretion of the author. The Center for Open Science has taken a lead in recommending data availability and opinion… - News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…href="https://osf.io/4mfk2">https://osf.io/4mfk2 A call for vigilance, as authors are receiving acceptance letters for papers which have never been submitted to the journal.https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/04/18/paper-acceptedunless-letter-forged/ An editorial in Clinical Orthopedics and Related Research discusses how the… - News
In the News: July Digest
…="_blank">https://www.crossref.org/blog/preprints-growth-rate-ten-times-higher-than-journal-articles/A new free preprint service for African scientists has been launched, powered by OSF Preprintshttps://osf.io/preprints/africarxiv Allegations of misconduct China has introduced sweeping reforms to crack down on academic misconduct. These include a national database which could disqualify researchers from future… - News
New: Chinese resources
…Chinese COPE resources We have new Chinese translations of COPE resources to add to our existing translated material. eLearning module: Introduction to Publication Ethics Guidelines: - News
Diversity in Peer Review: Survey Results
…organisers/panels • Kinds of diversity that are important in peer review: Area of expertise (88%) Gender (77%) Race/ethnicity (74%) Age (66%) Other (21%), including location/nationality, organisation/institution type, career… - News
COPE collaboration with FORCE11 Working Group
…href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/prometheus.36.2.0116?seq=1">research assessing data policies at journals across a number of disciplines. The authors looked at the information sharing policies of 150 journals and publishers from 15 disciplines to understand the levels of different data sharing policies in different fields. Our collaboration with the FORCE11 WG allows us to continue our work supporting editors and publishers in handling ethical considerations… - News
In the news: July & August 2022
…for sentinel papers in the study of Alzheimer's disease. "Everyone involved in research has a role to play in research integrity and no single stakeholder can maintain or raise standards alone" is introduction to discussion paper of panel presentation at World Congress on Research Integrity, 2022 which discusses roles of different… Resources and further reading
…href="https://cos.io/top/">https://cos.io/top/ Council of Science Editors (CSE): http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3331 European Association of Science Editors (EASE): http://www.ease.org.uk/ European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO)- Forum discussion topics
Bias in peer review
…in response to the kinds of diversity seen as being important in peer review. Two of the fifteen new reply options to this question in the 2021 survey also garnered significant responses, with 67% of respondents indicating that Career Level was important and 63% indicating that Geographic Diversity was important. The importance of Expertise Areas/Specialities decreased by 27% (from 88… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: taxonomy considerations
In this webinar, the speakers discussed findings from a Sloan funded project, Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science. Panelists shared resources for educating authors, editors, and other stakeholders about the importance of retraction, ideas for emerging cross industry collaborations, and suggestions… - Case
Critical comment and conflict of interest
Journal A received an article by Dr X (Article 1) commenting on another author’s work (Dr. Y) which had been published in Journal A and another journal (Journal B) of a different publisher. Because the scientific arguments were involved, and because the articles being criticised had been cited many times in the literature, the Editors of Journal A rejected Dr X's request to publish the work as… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: July 2018
…applications using these criteria, amongst others. The second, research transparency, is something that we can support and make easy (or at least easier) for the researchers who we serve. It’s arguable that transparency will make… - Seminars and webinars
Post-publication critiques
…Good research should produce data in a form which is ready to share and sites such as OSF and Zenodo provide this without charge. Some journals have moved towards mandating data sharing for certain article types (if possible under confidentiality agreements); at the BMJ all authors must submit a declaration stating whether… Presentations
…Responsible? Download PDF (88 kb) Presented by Jeremy Theobald At the US National Academy of Sciences and PNAS E-Journal Summit Washington, DC, USA 18 March 2008 2007 Dual use: editorial freedom and how editors will COPE Download PDF (660 kb)…- News
Data and reproducibility: The role of research institutions
…many journals have signed the TOP Guidelines, a part of this commitment focuses on increasing data, materials, and code transparency. Training is likely to be best accomplished through a diversity of formats. - News
Creating and implementing research data policies: COPE webinar report
…management policies, namely identification (persistent identifiers), description/discovery (via associated metadata), peer review of data, and data citation. He also explained that the role of the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines is not to mandate for data access per se, but to mandate disclosure of data… - News
WCRI 2019: Predatory publishing plenary
…href="https://osf.io/bknqh/" style="color:blue; text-decoration:underline">summit in Ottawa two months earlier. Speaking were Deborah Poff, the COPE chair, Bhushan…