Welcome to the June issue of COPE Digest

The summer and winter solstices have passed, depending on your hemisphere. I admit to a brief glance at solstice celebrations, but a Google AI query yielded a notation that some cultures use the solstice as a time for gratitude, introspection, and setting intentions. I’ll take my cue from this for the July COPE Digest letter, beginning this month’s letter with some notes of gratitude. We are thankful for the work that COPE Council member Anubhav Pradhan has done to support COPE’s efforts in the subcommittees focusing on books, DEIA issues, membership and the arts, humanities and social sciences. As he ends his term on the COPE Council, we wish him well.

I personally wish to thank the COPE staff for an incredible amount of very technical support for our recent COPE Council retreat, which was held via Zoom across the world’s time zones. My head still hurts thinking about all the details that were perfectly in line to pull off this many-day event.

The retreat sessions focused on some “big picture” thinking aligned with our 2025-2028 strategic plan. In line with our goals related to Integrity and Education we discussed core principles of publication ethics. We discussed the importance of linking core values, such as transparency and fairness, to core principles to help users implement them.  COPE guidance cannot address every nuance, of course, but providing that linkage might help members find an ethical approach, even if the exact guidance isn’t available.

With the same goals of Integrity and Education in mind, we will review all the different types of guidance we publish.  It is unclear to many, for instance, that the opinions presented in case discussions don’t have the strength of evidence that a guidance document has. In parallel, we will work to make them as useful and discoverable as possible on our website. We hope that this review will make it clearer for you to find and implement the support you need.

• work proactively to identify stakeholders we should be working with;
• focus on expanding our connections with universities and research institutes, and the exchange of knowledge and understanding between publishers, editors, and universities;
• look outside COPE’s traditional membership to make sure that we are serving the community as it evolves.

• a new toolkit for disability equity from C4DISC;
• new translations of the Think.Check.Submit checklist for authors looking for a trusted journal for their research;
• and webinars with advice on avoiding and preventing paper mills from United2Act.

JULY FORUM

Forum attendees will discuss the following cases, providing feedback and advice to the presenting member:

• Author wishes to withdraw a paper being investigated for plagiarism.
• Conflicts of interest at a scholarly society, and inappropriate access to journal database.
• Financial rewards being offered for identifying major errors.

DIGITAL COMMONS: ETHICAL PUBLISHING PRACTICES

• the latest guidelines and ethical standards in publishing;
• real-world case studies that highlight common ethical dilemmas and how they were resolved;
• practical advice on how journals can uphold integrity and transparency.

ASIA PACIFIC ASSOCIATION OF MEDICAL EDITORS

Submitting a guest editorial or opinion piece to COPE