Hello,
Welcome to a special issue of COPE Digest.
If you have been following one of our foci this year, you will have noticed an explicit commitment to diversity and inclusivity as a COPE theme. As a strategic goal of our last plan, we interpret this commitment broadly, including geographic diversity, gender diversity, issues of racial and ethnic diversity, ableism and breadth across the disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields of scholarly publishing.
This issue of Digest focuses on some of our activities with respect to our members in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS).
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The survey which is discussed in this issue confirms some assumptions and brings new insights in to how best to serve our AHSS members.
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COPE Chair Deborah Poff
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EXPLORING PUBLICATION ETHICS ISSUES IN THE ARTS, HUMANITIES, AND SOCIAL SCIENCES: A COPE STUDY 2019
This is COPE's first study to exclusively focus on publication ethics issues in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS) disciplines.
Completed by more than 650 journal editors (not solely COPE members), the study showed the following key findings:
- 64% of respondents encountered issues addressing language and writing quality barriers while seeking to remain inclusive.
- 58% reported detecting plagiarism as the most serious issue they dealt with, followed by fraudulent submissions (44%) and data or image fabrication (31%).
- Recognising and dealing with bias in peer reviewer comments was an issue encountered by 55% of journal editors.
- Journal editors felt least confident in dealing with data and/or image fabrication issues (24%), fraudulent submissions (23%), and intellectual property and copyright issues (21%).
In the appendices, we break down responses for each of the eight broad subject categories: Arts; Business, Economics and Finance; Education; Humanities; Law; Library and Information Science; Multi and Interdisciplinary; and Social Sciences to show which issues they each rated as most serious, frequent, and prevalent - and those they felt least confident addressing.
The study also compares the responses of our AHSS respondents to those of STM journals in a study by Wager et al in 2009.
READ MORE >
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INCLUSION IN SCHOLARLY PRACTICE
Karin Wulf, of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture and William & Mary, says she supports COPE's efforts to better understand the publishing landscape for editors in the arts, humanities, and social sciences (AHSS).
"So much of the scholarly publishing infrastructure is still focused on STEM journals, it’s vital that we better understand how a very different spectrum of disciplines is confronting some new challenges—and some of the same, old challenges newly revealed."
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POSSIBLE PLAGIARISM
Case Summary
Case 19-03
A whistleblower emailed a publisher, accusing two co-authors of substantial plagiarism in two chapters of a published book. Of the unattributed overlapping text, some was traced to the authors and some to other sources, whereas some overlapping text had been cited. When approached, the authors admitted their mistakes and oversight to the publisher and suggested publishing a correction. To the book editor, the plagiarism was not substantial and warranted a correction.
Question for the COPE Forum:
• Is this misconduct serious enough to warrant a retraction, or would it be sufficient to publish a correction?
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Implications of failing to disclose relevant data during presentations; comparison of how research funding decisions are made; the experience of attending a predatory conference. These are among the news stories gathered by COPE Council members this month.
READ FULL NEWS SUMMARY >
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Research
Review of "Research ethics in the real world" which addresses research ethics in the social sciences.
READ MORE >
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Authorship
A Russian company auctions authorship slots to researchers. Clarivate’s Web of Science Group investigates.
READ MORE >
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Open Access
Academic review promotion and tenure documents promote a view of open access that is at odds with the wider academic community
READ MORE >
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PATRICK BARRON
 We are very sad to inform you that Patrick Barron, COPE Council member since 2016, has passed away. We understand that Patrick passed away peacefully in hospital after being poorly for a little while. Patrick was an active and committed member of the Facilitation & Integrity subcommittee and he was always very thoughtful with his contributions.
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EUROPEAN SEMINAR: NETHERLANDS
23 SEPTEMBER 2019
Topics with guest speakers include Retractions, Predatory Publishing, Text Recycling, Research Misconduct in the media, and Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences research results. We will then break out into smaller groups to discuss real cases brought to COPE Forum.
READ MORE & REGISTER >
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PEER REVIEW WORKSHOP: NORWAY
26 NOVEMBER 2019
In the run up to the Munin conference on scholarly publishing, COPE is holding a pre-conference workshop on peer review for editors, expertly run by COPE Council members Howard Browman and Mirjam Curno. The workshop is at University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, campus Breivika.
READ MORE >
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APAME (Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors)
3-5 September 2019
XI'AN, CHINA
COPE Council member, Trevor Lane, is keynote speaker on 'Ethical issues and publishing misconduct'. The theme of the convention is 'Open, Ethic, Evaluation and Integration' and the convention is open to all editors, authors, researchers, librarians, and publishers of medical journals.
MORE INFORMATION >
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ISMTE EUROPEAN CONFERENCE
3 October 2019
OXFORD, UK
COPE council member Chris Graf will run a session ‘Change and constants at COPE’ on new ethical challenges facing journal editors.
MORE INFORMATION >
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ISMPP Asia Pacific Meeting
6 September 2019
TOKYO, JAPAN
ISMPP is offering COPE members a 10% discount for its meeting, Bridging Global Standards and Regional Practices.
MORE INFORMATION >
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PEER REVIEW WEEK
16 - 20 September 2019
Quality and the Peer Review Process There are many ways you can get involved in Peer Review Week.
MORE INFORMATION >
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MEDICAL JOURNAL EDITORS SHORT COURSE
13 - 15 November 2019
OXFORD, UK
This international workshop is designed to help editors ensure their journals achieve the maximum impact with the best research.
MORE INFORMATION >
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COPE Digest Editors:
Deborah Kahn, Publishing Director, Taylor & Francis
Nancy C Chescheir, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Obstetrics and Gynecology
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