Academic and professional literature publisher Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., UK, has announced a partnership with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), starting January 1, 2009. The committee works with scientific journal editors to help them improve their skills and the quality of their publications. This partnership will provide Emerald with additional support to its editors. Emerald editors will now be able to discuss and learn more about publication ethics and meet other editors. It will also enable them to identify potential problems.
COPE is a forum for editors of peer-reviewed journals to discuss issues related to the integrity of the scientific record. It supports and encourages editors to report, catalogue and initiate investigations into ethical problems in the publication process, and is currently engaged in a major expansion programme. Its main role is to offer advice to editors of academic journals on tackling issues affecting integrity of work, such as suspected research or publication misconduct.
Established in 1997 COPE has now over 3500 members. The COPE forum meets quarterly to discuss cases as do their governing body the COPE council. COPE acts as an external body available for advice when any aspect of misconduct arises. COPE have written flowcharts that offer a step-by-step guide for editors to deal with the most common breaches of publication ethics in journals. These include duplicate publication, suspected plagiarism and suspected fabricated data. COPE also funds research on issues relating to publication misconduct, in addition to organising annual seminars and an online distance learning course.
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