Category Archives: COPE

Cyberbullying in the publishing industry

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The article in Retraction Watch on March 23, 2017 written by Virginia Barbour, the current chairperson of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) points out a number of concerning events that editors and publishers need to watch.  In the piece she describes the cyberbullying that occurred in relation to a complaint sent to COPE about a manuscript issue.  This escalated to serious and upsetting levels that all of COPE leadership watched and tried to intervene in supporting Dr. Barbour.  It raises issues that could be of concern to nursing editors, namely that we are all vulnerable to email attacks and the incivility that can characterize communications that are lawless and without moral compass.  All journal editors receive complaints, but we should all have a process to deal with complaints and disputes. What would you do if you found your editorial role, your journal, your personal life, under attack from a faceless individual that would go to great lengths to discredit your work?  Despite our processes at COPE, the complaints about articles, authors, data, and interpretations, escalated into ad hominem attacks on the people at COPE, most notably Dr. Barbour.  The article in Retraction Watch was her response to this attack that has occurred over the past year.

Peggy Chinn, Leslie Nicoll, and Charon Pierson (also an officer at COPE) began discussing these issues in relation to the Retraction Watch article.  We believe that the wider INANE group needs to start a dialogue around these issues, protecting the editor role and journal integrity, and acknowledging that while nursing is somewhat insulated from these intense cyberattacks, they could occur.  I invite you to begin this discussion, which will continue in Denver in August at our meeting.  I’m giving much thought to these issues as I begin a three year term as the co-chairperson of COPE with Chris Graf, a Wiley publisher in the UK.  I would like us to continue this dialogue!

 

Interview with Charon Pierson on Retraction Watch

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INANE Member and COPE Council Member Charon Pierson had an interview posted on Retraction Watch on March 22nd. From the website:

Ever wonder how editors figure out whether a paper should be corrected, retracted, or left as-is? For a window into that crucial decision-making process, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publishes a number of anonymized cases per year, in which they weigh in on a dilemma faced by a journal editor. The organization has weighed in on more than 500 such situations since 1997. We spoke with Charon Pierson, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners and the Secretary of the Trustee Board and Council at COPE to find out more information about these cases – including the one that affected her most.

Click here to read the entire interview.

Program for INANE 2016 is Announced!

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Greetings!

The Planning Committee for INANE 2016 has been hard at work for the past two months, lining up speakers for the general sessions at INANE 2016. We are excited about the presentations, which include:

  • Natasha McEnroe, director of the Florence Nightingale Museum in London will be the opening speaker at our Gala on Monday, August 1.
  • Ben Goldacre, author of Bad Science and a founder of AllTrials, will present on Missing Trials on Tuesday, August 2nd. If you are not familiar with Ben, you can watch his TED talks here and here.
  • A speaker from ORCID has been confirmed–the exact speaker will be announced when details are finalized. This session will also be on Tuesday, August 2nd.
  • Major Chris Carter will speak on the Oral Histories Project of the Defence Nursing Forum on Wednesday, August 3rd.
  • INANE 2016 will close with a formal COPE forum, organized by Linda Gough, executive director of COPE, and Geri Pearson and Charon Pierson, COPE Council board members.

You can see all details of the program here. What’s missing? The voice of INANE! While the general sessions have been planned, we need INANE members to submit abstracts for posters and breakout sessions. The Call for Abstracts is open now. Abstracts will be accepted until January 15, 2016. If you need ideas to get started, there are suggestions for potential topics which were noted in the evaluations from INANE 2015 listed on the Call for Abstracts page. As always, we ask that you be creative in your approach to your presentation, involve the audience in interactive activities, and think about how to take your presentation to the next level beyond “This is what I did.” The Abstract Review Committee is eager to get to work! No abstracts have been received yet–who will be the first?

Registration for INANE 2016 will open on October 15, 2016. Once again there will be early bird (until December 31, 2015) registration which is actually less than early bird was in Las Vegas! We believe that INANE 2016 is a great value, especially when you consider that the conference has been extended to a full day on Wednesday!

If you have questions or need more information, you can use the Contact Form to send them directly to me. On behalf of INANE 2016 host, Gary Bell, and the rest of the Planning Committee, I look forward to welcoming my INANE colleagues to London next summer!

Leslie

COPE membership

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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!