MET workshops
Delve into COPE cases: how would you respond to real-life disputes mediated by the Committee on Publication Ethics?
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) – founded in the late 1990s by concerned journal editors – is a peer group committed to educating and supporting journal editors, publishers and all those grappling with modern publication ethics. COPE’s aim is to move publishing culture towards more ethical practices by making those practices widely known and well understood.
As part of the group’s editorial advisory mission, COPE’S members – who number more than 12,000 in over 100 countries – are encouraged to submit cases of complaint, doubt or conflict for discussion at the quarterly Forum. Hot issues in the past have included textual plagiarism, redundant publication, data manipulation and peer review processes, among others. At present, authorship remains one of the most commonly mentioned concerns of COPE members, accounting for over 25% of the cases submitted since 1997.
This workshop will start with an introduction to COPE’s Core Practices. Real cases from past COPE forums will then be presented for discussion. All were chosen for their relevance to MET members’ work with authors and journals, and some address issues of giving credit where credit’s due, the theme of METM18. We’ll read the cases out together, discuss them in small groups, and then learn – and comment on – what the members of COPE’s forum thought and advised.
Developer and facilitator: Iria del Río
Purposes:
1) to learn how COPE’s recommended Core Practices are applied to help editors manage disputes
2) to experience the complexity of the ethical issues both authors and editors contend with
3) to gain confidence in helping authors navigate the waters of scholarly publication
Outcome: A deeper understanding of the values underlying scholarly publication and the practices of communities of scholars.
Who should attend? Manuscript editors and translators who work with academic authors or journal publishers.
Pre- or post-workshop information: The documents linked here provide authentic background information for the issues journal editors discuss. COPE is currently working on an updated version of the authorship discussion document from 2014.
- Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (a statement by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME)
- COPE flowcharts. The flowcharts help editors follow the Core Practices – providing a step by step algorithm
- Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals (Consensus of the ICMJE – also known as the "Vancouver group" of medical journal editors)
- Responsible Research Publication: International Standards for Authors (a 2010 position statement for the 2nd World Congress on Research Integrity, by Elizabeth Wager, a former METM speaker, and Sabine Kleinert)
- What Constitutes Authorship? (a COPE discussion document)
- Text Recycling (COPE guidelines for editors)
- Promoting Awareness of Good Authorship Practice (a presentation by SW Leung at the 1st COPE China seminar, 2017)
- How to Handle Authorship Disputes (a 2003 COPE report by Tim Albert and Elizabeth Wager that remains relevant)
About the facilitator: Iria del Río is a member of COPE’s Council and the METM18 plenary speaker on Saturday. Her involvement with COPE is a natural outcome of her responsibilities as Editorial Director (since 2008) of Revista Española de Cardiología (REC), the official journal of the Spanish Society of Cardiology, which is published online in both Spanish and English. Before joining the REC team, Iria gained a comprehensive understanding of editorial challenges through international experience in areas outside biomedicine, including her position as a communications officer at the UN World Tourism Organization and other non-academic book publishing collaborations. Her background is in communication and management (BA in Journalism, BA in English Studies, and MA in Strategic and Policy Management of Tourism Destinations). She is based in Madrid, Spain.
