 | |
| Abbreviation | COPE |
|---|---|
| Formation | 1997 |
| Registration no. | 1123023 |
Official language | English |
| Website | www |
 |
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(March 2021) |
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a nonprofit organization whose stated mission is to define best practice in the ethics of scholarly publishing and to assist editors and publishers to achieve this. [1] [2] [3] [4]
COPE educates and support editors, publishers and those involved in publication ethics with the aim of moving the culture of publishing towards one where ethical practices become the norm, part of the publishing culture. COPE's approach is firmly in the direction of influencing through education, resources and support of COPE members. It also provides a forum for its members to discuss individual cases.
COPE publishes a monthly newsletter and organises annual seminars. COPE has created an audit tool for members to measure compliance with its 'Core Practices' and guidance in the form of flowcharts, discussion documents, guidelines and eLearning modules.
COPE was established in 1997 by a small group of medical journal editors in the United Kingdom. As of 2022, COPE has over 13,000 members worldwide, from all academic fields. Paid membership is open to editors of academic journals and others interested in publication ethics, and varies per year depending on the membership type. [5]
COPE's first guidelines were developed after discussion at the COPE meeting in April 1999 and were published as Guidelines on Good Publication Practice in the Annual Report in 1999. On their basis, the first edition of Code of Conduct for Editors was published on the first COPE website in November 2004, with an Editorial in the BMJ.[5] The Code was replaced in 2017 with a simplified description of expectations as COPE's Core Practices, with links to COPE's detailed guidance.
Previous COPE Chairs include: Michael Farthing, Fiona Godlee, Harvey Markovitch, Elizabeth Wager, Virginia Barbour, [6] [7] Chris Graf and Geraldine Pearson (co-Chairs), [8] Deborah Poff. COPE is currently chaired by Dan Kulp.
COPE is governed by the Trustee Board, who are ultimately responsible for the financial, legal and business operations of COPE as a charitable business and gives authority to Council and the Executive Officer and team to manage the day to day affairs of the organization.
COPE also has links with the Council of Science Editors, the European Association of Science Editors, the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors, the World Association of Medical Editors, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, Directory of Open Access Journals, STM, and the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers.
Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in the publication of professional scientific research. A Lancet review on Handling of Scientific Misconduct in Scandinavian countries provides the following sample definitions, reproduced in The COPE report 1999:
Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences. Within an academic field, scientific literature is often referred to as the literature. Academic publishing is the process of contributing the results of one's research into the literature, which often requires a peer-review process.
The Council of Science Editors (CSE), formerly the Council of Biology Editors and originally the Conference of Biology Editors, is a United States-based nonprofit organization that supports editorial practice among scientific writers. In 2008, the CSE adopted the slogan "CSE: Education, Ethics, and Evidence for Editors (E4)".
The Hastings Center is an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute and think tank based in Garrison, New York. It was instrumental in establishing the field of bioethics and is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in the world.
Hindawi is a commercial publisher of scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature. It currently publishes more than 230 peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as a number of scholarly monographs, with an annual output of roughly 20,000 articles each year.
MDPI is a publisher of open access scientific journals. Founded by Shu-Kun Lin as a chemical sample archive, it now publishes over 390 peer-reviewed, open access journals. MDPI is the largest open access publisher in the world and the fifth largest publisher overall in terms of journal paper output. The number of published papers has been growing significantly in the last decade with year over year growth of over 50% in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) is a professional organization of social workers in the United States. NASW has about 120,000 members. The NASW provides guidance, research, up to date information, advocacy, and other resources for its members and for social workers in general. Members of the NASW are also able to obtain malpractice insurance, members-only publications, discounts on other products and services, and continuing education.
The European Association of Science Editors is a non-profit membership organisation for people interested in science communication and editing. Founded in 1982, in France, EASE now has an international membership.
Medical ghostwriters are employed by pharmaceutical companies and medical-device manufacturers to produce apparently independent manuscripts for peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations and other communications. Physicians and other scientists are paid to attach their names to the manuscripts as though they had authored them. The named authors may have had little or no involvement in the research or writing process.
The National Society of Genetic Counselors (NSGC), founded and incorporated in 1979, is the largest association of genetic counselors with over 3,600 members. Its membership includes genetic counselors and other healthcare professionals working in the field of medical genetics from the United States, Canada, and around the world.
EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English were first published by the European Association of Science Editors (EASE) in 2010. Updated versions are periodically released at the EASE Guidelines page of the EASE website. EASE Guidelines summarize the most important editorial recommendations, aiming to make international scientific communication more efficient and to aid in preventing scientific misconduct. They also support the global initiative Healthcare Information For All by 2015 by advising authors to make abstracts of their papers highly informative, reliable, and easily understandable. The document has been translated into many languages, to facilitate its popularization worldwide and help scientists from non-Anglophone countries.
Frontiers in Psychology is a peer-reviewed open-access academic journal covering all aspects of psychology in 30 sections. It was established in 2010 and is published by Frontiers Media.
Predatory publishing, also write-only publishing or deceptive publishing, is an exploitative academic publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without checking articles for quality and legitimacy, and without providing editorial and publishing services that legitimate academic journals provide, whether open access or not. The phenomenon of "open access predatory publishers" was first noticed by Jeffrey Beall, when he described "publishers that are ready to publish any article for payment". However, criticisms about the label "predatory" have been raised. A lengthy review of the controversy started by Beall appears in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.
"Who's Afraid of Peer Review?" is an article written by Science correspondent John Bohannon that describes his investigation of peer review among fee-charging open-access journals. Between January and August 2013, Bohannon submitted fake scientific papers to 304 journals owned by fee-charging open access publishers. The papers, writes Bohannon, "were designed with such grave and obvious scientific flaws that they should have been rejected immediately by editors and peer reviewers", but 60% of the journals accepted them. The article and associated data were published in the 4 October 2013 issue of Science as open access.
Check List is a peer-reviewed, open access, on-line scientific journal that publishes Annotated Lists of Species (ALS), Notes on Geographic Distribution (NGD), Distribution Summary (DS), Book Reviews (BR) and Forum Papers (FP). The journal was established in 2005 to serve as a mean of publishing inventories that are essential for studies on biogeography and provide a baseline for conservation studies. Since 2017 it has been published by Pensoft Publishers.
Francesca Rossi is an Italian computer scientist, currently working at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Lab as an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader.
Conflicts of interest (COIs) often arise in academic publishing. Such conflicts may cause wrongdoing and make it more likely. Ethical standards in academic publishing exist to avoid and deal with conflicts of interest, and the field continues to develop new standards. Standards vary between journals and are unevenly applied. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, "[a]uthors have a responsibility to evaluate the integrity, history, practices and reputation of the journals to which they submit manuscripts".
The International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) is a scientific society with membership drawn from more than 60 countries, dedicated to the study of environmental epidemiology and exposure assessment. It provides a forum for the discussion of problems unique to the study of health and the environment. The primary objective of ISEE is to promote research and disseminate scientific findings focused on the relationships between environmental exposures and human health. Each year, ISEE puts a spotlight on global discussion of environmental health and gathers scientists from all over the world to discuss measuring harmful factors in the environment including environmental health after disasters, e-waste, endocrine disrupting chemicals affecting pregnancy, and more. These include annual meetings, newsletters, workshops and liaisons with academic, governmental, inter-governmental, non-profit and business institutions.
Virginia M. Barbour is a professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane, Australia, and serves as the Director of the Australasian Open Access Strategy Group. She is best known for being one of the three founding editors of PLOS Medicine, and her various roles in championing the open access movement.
In research, a paper mill is a "profit oriented, unofficial and potentially illegal organisation that produces and sells authorship on research manuscripts. In some cases, paper mills are sophisticated operations that sell authorship positions on legitimate research, but in many cases the papers contain fraudulent data and can be heavily plagiarized or otherwise unprofessional. According to a report from Nature, thousands of papers in academic journals have been traced to paper mills from China, Iran and Russia, and some journals are revamping their review processes."