This message comes form Charon Pierson, our INANE member who is on the COPE Council along with our own Geri Pearson (both nursing journal editors as well)!
Questions were raised at our last (and fabulous) meeting in Las Vegas about how to become members of COPE (the Committee on Publication Ethics). Many of you might already be members and not know it. To access the many benefits of COPE you may simply have to activate your existing membership. Most of the major publishers have paid for and signed up their journals as members. So, although membership is not free, it is likely already paid by your publisher.
To find out if you are already a member, go to http://publicationethics.org/ and click on the tab “Members” near the top of the screen. Once on the Members page, you can find out if your journal is already a member in two ways: 1) type your name into the search box on the right of your screen or 2) type the official name of your journal into the same search box. If you don’t see your name or your journal’s name, contact your publisher to see if your journal is a member and if it is a member, if the membership information has been updated to include you as the editor.
Once you have identified that your journal is a member, and that you are listed as the editor, you can activate your personal log in, which you accomplish by creating a password in the “Edit my details” tab at the very top of the page near the log in spot. If you are unable to do that, contact the COPE administrator on the “Contact Us” tab at the far end of the tabs near the top of the page to reset your password or change any details that are incorrect in your listing.
As a member you will be eligible to vote on the changes to the Memorandum and Articles of Association, which will be voted upon at the Annual General Meeting on September 9, 2015 in London. Both Geri Pearson and Charon Pierson will be in attendance at this important meeting. As a member you are also eligible to participate in the Forum conference calls and attend COPE seminars free. COPE provides editors with a lot of valuable resources so don’t forget to take full advantage of your membership.
If you did not see the live blogs from our Las Vegas conference, check them out here! It was another fabulous conference!
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