Guidelines

Other than the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers, COPE has written guidelines on the following:

General guidelines

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

COPE is just one of a number of organisations that is seeing a large rise in applications for membership from new journals. Although we very much want to encourage and support legitimate new journals, we are also mindful that many new journals are not currently sufficiently transparent about their business practices and authors in particular may be unable to judge the legitimacy of these journals. Together with OASPA, DOAJ, and WAME we have therefore compiled a minimum set of criteria that journals will be assessed against when they apply for membership at one of our organisations. The full criteria can be seen here and we welcome feedback. We encourage authors and anyone else who is unfamiliar with a journal to use these criteria in assessing a journal.

• Document

Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing [PDF, 145 KB. Version 2, June 2015.]

Web version

Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases: guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

• Document

Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases: guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

Web version

Guidelines for retracting articles

• Document

Retraction guidelines [PDF, 121 KB. Version 1, September 2009.]

Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals

• Document

Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals [PDF, 66 KB. Version 1, October 2008.]

Guidelines for editors

Journals’ Best Practices for Ensuring Consent for Publishing Medical Case Reports: guidance from COPE

• Document

Journals’ Best Practices for Ensuring Consent for Publishing Medical Case Reports: guidance from COPE [PDF, 250 KB. December 2016]

Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct

• Document

Sharing of Information Among Editors-in-Chief Regarding Possible Misconduct [PDF, 138 KB. Version 1, March 2015.]

Details

Text recycling guidelines for editors

• Document

How to deal with text recycling [PDF, 312 KB. July 2016]

Details

A Short Guide to Ethical Editing for New Editors

• Document

A_Short_Guide_to_Ethical_Editing.pdf [PDF, 180 KB. Version 2, 15 January 2016]

Details

Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations

• Document

Guidance for Editors: Research, Audit and Service Evaluations [PDF, 107 KB. Version 2, January 2014.]

Guidelines for peer reviewers

COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers

• Document

COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers - English [PDF, 145 KB. Version 1, March 2013.]

• Document

COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers - Chinese [PDF, 648KB, Version 1, February 2017]

Details

Guidelines for authors

How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers

• Document

How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers [PDF, 64 KB. 2003.]

Details