The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) is a charity registered in the UK. It is concerned with the integrity of peer-reviewed publications in science, particularly biomedicine. It was established in 1997 and meets in London but its over 5200 members are from all continents. Its membership is composed mostly of Editors-in-Chief of scientific journals, with some other companies and individuals who are interested in publication ethics as Associate Members. Indeed, some publishers (Elsevier, Wiley–Blackwell, Springer, Taylor & Francis and the BMJ Publishing Group) have signed up their entire catalogue of journal titles as COPE members.
COPE provides a forum for publishers and Editors of scientific journals to discuss issues relating to the integrity of the work submitted to or published in their journals, both print and online. Examples include conflicts of interest, falsification and fabrication of data, plagiarism, unethical experimentation, inadequate subject consent and authorship disputes. It encourages its members to seek investigation into suggested miscondcut by the employing universities, hospitals or other funders of prima facie cases.
The COPE Forum, open to all members, meets quarterly to discuss cases and posts its advice on how to handle the matter on this website, where summaries of all cases can be found, most with the resulting outcome. Its governing body, the COPE Council, also meets quarterly: members include Editors, writers, publishers, ethicists and lawyers, among others. It has appointed an Ombudsman to deal with disputes between COPE members or between them and the organisation. It also publishes a Code of Conduct for Editors who are members of the organisation and will investigate complaints against them. It provides, freely, flowcharts on how to handle the more common publication misconduct problems.
COPE also funds research on issues relating to publication misconduct, will be publishing a newsletter and its officers lecture widely on the subject, making their presentations available to members. COPE organises annual seminars in the UK and has plans for similar events in the USA from 2009. COPE is committed to improving Editors' abilities to deal with publication misconduct and is developing an online distance-learning course to do so. COPE has also provided its members with an auditing tool for their journals to measure compliance with its Best Practice Guidelines.
It helps fund the UK Panel for Research Integrity, its chairman sitting on the board and made a major contribution to the First World Conference on Research Integrity in Lisbon, 2007. COPE intends to contribute further to the Second World Conference on Research Integrity in 2010 by running workshops for South-East Asian Editors. It also has links with the Council of Science Editors in the USA and the World Association of Medical Editors, as well as other groups related to its cause. You can read more about COPE's history here.
