- News
WCRI 2019: Responsible authorship panel
…by an editor attempting to resolve a dispute prior to publishing a paper. From the institutional perspective there is a need for clear definitions and criteria of authorship at the institutional level, governed by national codes of ethical conduct, for a research integrity officer to effectively investigate a complaint. A clear process and procedure must also be followed, and all involved… - News
WCRI 2019: Transparency 2025 panel
…ecosystem of well-curated, interoperable research articles, data and software supported by diverse open publishing models’. Ginny reminded the audience that open scholarship offers increased transparency in the dissemination of outputs, with benefits of increased availability and transparency of research data and related software, but there needs to be a focus on the underlying infrastructure needed for… - News
Guest article: Detecting integrity issues
…fragments discovered near the English village Piltown. Although there was skepticism of his findings from the beginning, it took more than 40 years to prove that the finding was a hoax. The fragments turned out to be a collection of the remains of three distinct species. Today, we want to discover fraud and prevent it from entering the scientific record more quickly. And publishers and editors have… Increasing number of fraudulent papers produced by “paper mills”
…multiple papers are compared, usually across different publishers, when the similarity of layout, figures, or images become obvious. Publishers need to be open and to collaborate to address this issue. A group of COPE member publishers give advice on what to do individually and collectively in this Publisher’s perspective:…- Event
COPE Forum: December 2022
…advice? Submit a case The deadline to submit a case for this Forum is: Thursday 24 November 2022. --> Forum agenda On Thursday 8 December 2022 the COPE Forum will be held at 14:00-15:30pm (GMT / UTC) 1. Update Update on COPE activities by the Chair. 2. Forum discussion topic We begin the… - Discussion documents
Responding to anonymous whistleblowers, January 2013
…via the use of anti-plagiarism software. Other emails have alleged figure manipulation. The pattern of the cases is not clear; they range across many different types of journals and publishers; cases may be very old or more recent. Whistle blowers may copy COPE council or staff on the emails. A link to the readout from software is sometimes provided; often information is only provided for abstracts.… - Seminars and webinars
Webinar 2019: Allegations of misconduct
…Allegations of Misconduct and the role of editors, journals and publishers. Tara introduced COPE's Core Practice Allegations of Misconduct and the responsibility to ensure that you have taken adequate steps before making a decision to ensure it is reasonable and to reduce the possibility that the decision is biased, arbitrary or fundamentally unfair. If you're looking at your processes it would be useful to… - News
Letter from the COPE Chair and Vice-Chair
…href="https://publicationethics.org/about/council/susan-garfinkel">Susan Garfinkel and Mark Hooper whose knowledge and experience of university and research institute research integrity will be invaluable. Susan, a COPE Trustee, is currently the Associate Vice President for Research Compliance at the Ohio State University, US. Mark Hooper, a Council member, is the Manager of Research… - Flowcharts
Inappropriate image manipulation in a published article
…="https://publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/image-manipulation-published-article-cope-flowchart.pdf" target="_blank">Inappropriate image manipulation in a published article PDF 155 KB Key points Decisions on what action to take will be influenced by whether manipulation of the images has an effect on… Become a member
…sufficiently transparent about their business practices and authors in particular may be unable to judge the legitimacy of these journals. Together with Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) we have…- News
In the news: May 2018 Digest
…encouragement and provision of venues for them to be published?http://www.csescienceeditor.org/article/reevaluating-the-quest-for-negative-results/ This blog discusses the results of one of the largest surveys of researchers about research data, and concludes that we need to give researchers more… Editing, reviewing and writing during COVID-19
…2021 2020 saw a sharp increase in articles on all subjects being submitted to scientific journals. The changes in science publishing were seen in the speed of review, the number of preprints and the topics of research. Nature: how COVID science changed publishing December 2020 A series of posts…- Webform
Journal membership application form
…1 year before they can apply for membership Applicants must agree to apply the COPE principles of publication ethics outlined in the Core Practices. Only complete forms will be considered How applications are assessed: The - News
COPE Officers 2019-2021
…years and we're pleased they will be with us for another year. Charon Pierson has come to the end of her time with COPE, having joined COPE Council in 2012 followed by two terms as COPE Secretary. We owe a huge thanks to Charon for her contribution to COPE, in developing guidance and writing commentary for Digest newsletter, presenting at seminars and workshops as well as regularly chairing the… - News
Guest article: Inclusion in Scholarly Practice
…that we better understand how a very different spectrum of disciplines is confronting some new challenges—and some of the same, old challenges newly revealed. In so many aspects of our world we need to be thinking with the very tools that AHSS puts at our disposal, and in ways that will benefit our colleagues in STEM fields as well. Inclusion is not only about the who of our inquiry… - Event
COPE Forum: March 2023
…%3ESubmit%20a%20case%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%3Cp%3EThe%20deadline%20to%20submit%20a%20case%20for%20this%20Forum%26nbsp%3Bis%3A%20Thursday%2024%20November%202022.%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%0A%2D%2D%3E--> Forum agenda On Thursday 23 March 2023 the COPE Forum will be held at 15:00-16:30pm (GMT / UTC) 1. Update on COPE activities Update on COPE activities by the Chair. - Case
Victim of article theft wants correction to list their name, not retraction
…preparation of the article for publication (submitting, revising, etc) and the author(s) who stole the paper may have made changes to the paper. The editor may wish to direct the author to their authorship criteria and peer review process to explain why transferring authorship is not appropriate. To prevent theft of a paper, one idea put forward was for the DOI to be reserved in advance, with the… - Guidelines
Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers
Peer review guidelines provide basic principles and standards to which all peer reviewers should adhere during the peer review process in research publication. Peer reviewers play a central and critical part in the peer-review process, but too often come to the role without any guidance and unaware of their ethical obligations. These guidelines are intended to be applied across… - Discussion documents
Predatory publishing
…journals may include community education or criminal charges. Guidance, training, and safe lists should be updated regularly as new journals frequently emerge. Predatory publishers often use the author publication charge business model. Related resources COPE webinar: Understanding text recycling
…="http://publicationethics.org/resources/seminars-and-webinars/european-seminar-2019-text-recycling-research-project">they presented at COPE's European Seminar in 2019. “I've been ‘iThenticating’ all revised papers for several years now, and am continually frustrated by self-plagiarism… You’d think that researcher/authors with MDs and PhDs would be bright enough to know how to reword.” Managing editor of a medical journal