- News
In the news: September 2020
…a paper. This case study explores the issue and makes recommendations to prevent its occurrence. Research Integrity Guidelines on how institutions assess and reward their researchers’ work, the ‘Hong Kong principles’ have been designed to strengthen research… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Keynote address
…described. Universities and publishers must establish a working, strategic two-way conversation and relationship to facilitate mutual success in a highly competitive international context. This will then evolve into a recognition of some shared and mutual interests and goals, and a commitment to work together. The presentations will be followed by a Q&A. - Discussion documents
Diversity and inclusivity
This COPE discussion document begins a process of addressing the wide range of themes, challenges and changes required to establish a more inclusive and diverse scholarly publishing community. COPE welcomes comments which add to the ongoing debate. Diversity and… - Case
Should we allow pseudonymous authorship?
…their employer to ensure internal compliance. Using pseudonyms may also create procedural complications for journals, such as how to link ORCID ids to the authors, so if a journal is to support such a move then it must be fully confident that there are risks to the authors which justify masking their identities. If the publisher does not have text in their guidelines on this then it… - News
Artificial intelligence in the news
This page is regularly updated Go to latest news update April 2023 It is rare that the mainstream media and the specialist world of publication ethics coincide. However, since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT tool at the end of 2022 ( - News
In the news: February Digest
…/12 For more information about SINTA, see the following: https://www.authoraid.info/en/news/details/1302/ New national performance database SINTA: http://sinta2.ristekdikti.go.id/ Indonesian scientists embrace preprint… - News
COPE response to Science paper submission of fake paper, by Virginia Barbour, on behalf of COPE council
At COPE we have followed with intense interest the recent report in Science of a fake paper submitted to multiple journals, some of whom accepted it. There is no doubt that this "sting" raises a number of issues, that academic publishing and those who seek to improve it, need to tackle head on-though I'd argue they are not necessarily the ones that Science thinks are top… - News
Letter from COPE Vice-Chair: February 2020
…COPE guidance to ensure that your users find the right, and most up to date, version of COPE resources. In closing, I’d like to commend the editors and publishers who have made publicly available all data and information concerning the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019 nCoV). This new strain is threatening to become a pandemic, so coordinated and open research focused on halting the spread of this… - Case
Conflict of interest
…process. The journal encourages genuine debate, and will always consider seriously allegations of scientific misconduct. It is unfortunate, however, that in this case much of the debate was aimed at exploiting historical divisions in the country in question. That process has obscured the message of the authors’research and detracted from the real issue—the welfare of civilians in… - Case
Alleged misuse of confidential information
…was by invitation only and the confidential nature of its content was made obvious. The clinician collaborators of author B did not respond to repeated requests by the editor to identify the three overlapping patients by their pedigree IDs in each of the two papers. In his response to a query by the editor, author A stated that in 2006 (and, therefore, prior to the 2009 meeting), he had… - Discussion documents
Authorship
…place for handling this range of circumstances. COPE provides key information resources for authors, core policy guidance for editors, notes on the scope of submission guidelines, resources for managing pre- and post-publication authorship disputes, guidance for institutions to manage and support authorship integrity. - Seminars and webinars
Artificial intelligence and peer review
In this session, COPE Council Member, Mike Streeter, hosts a discussion between Dustin Smith (Hum), and Mohammad Hosseini (postdoctoral researcher and collaborator at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Medicine) about the state… - Forum discussion topics
Predatory publishing: next steps and where do we go from here?
December 2020 Since COPE drafted a discussion paper on the topic of predatory publishing in 2019, many more scholarly papers have been published on various aspects of this issue so there is no lack of research into the practice. However, while… - News
Letter from the COPE co-Chairs: January 2019
…height: 125px; margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px; float: left;" /> Read January 2019 COPE Digest newsletter and use the COPE Audit Tool, read a case discussion on citation manipulation, get dates in the diary for COPE events in 2019, and keep… - News
Guest article: Detecting integrity issues
…Discovering fraud and protecting the scientific record Scientific fraud is possibly as old as science itself. An early, notorious example is the Piltdown Man. In 1912, amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed that he had discovered the "missing link" between ape and man in the form of bone… - News
In the news: May & June 2022
…to data publication, but further community work is needed toward a responsible and cohesive data publishing ecosystem. Researchers who make their data sets openly available should be valued as highly as authors of published papers;… - News
COPE in 2023: Update
In January, we published a letter in COPE Digest where we recognised that, as ethical issues change and evolve, so must COPE. We thus affirmed our commitment to reviewing a number of our processes to ensure they are fit for purpose. In this letter we give a brief update on progress in these areas. - Case
Authorship dispute
…the dean of the university. The committee felt that an investigation should be carried out and it might we worth contacting the the UK Panel for Research Integrity in Health and Biomedical Sciences to ask them to suggest an independent party to sit on an enquiry. Update (August 2007) After various twists and turns, the institution at which the plaintiff had… - Seminars and webinars
Seminar 2021: Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted science: taxonomy considerations
…machine-readable form and to encourage publishers to alert users to corrections/retractions using a standard, cross-publisher UI convention. What have we learned from CrossMark and how would we do things differently if we were starting again? Reducing the inadvertent spread of retracted…