Building Inclusion and Integrity in the Academic Community: An Interview with a COPE Trustee
As the dissemination of research, ideas, and discourse accelerates, we face new challenges in our efforts to safeguard research integrity and support an equitable and inclusive process for all. At SAGE we remain committed to publishing the highest quality research that reflects our dedication to diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) so that ultimately, it can benefit society. Our own Associate VP for Research Publishing, Caroline Porter, volunteers as a Trustee on the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), allowing us to draw upon expertise from across the industry to fulfil this goal. We spoke to Caroline about how her role at COPE supports her work at SAGE and how we can build integrity in the academic community.
1. What does your role involve as a Trustee for COPE?
COPE’s aim is to educate and advance knowledge in methods of safeguarding the integrity of the scholarly record. The role of COPE Trustees is to provide leadership and oversight for the delivery of its core mission and purpose. The Trustee Board bears responsibility for regular development and review of COPE’s performance and monitors the sustainability of the organisation. This involves working collegially with the Board, Council and staff via regular meetings and open discussion. Trustees also play an active part in driving activity via COPE’s various subcommittees; my role includes chairing the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility subcommittee as well as participating in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences subcommittee.
2. How does the work of the COPE Trustees Board help the academic community? And is the academic community aware of the benefits that an industry body like COPE provides?
I have been a COPE Trustee since 2019 and have found its staff and volunteers (Trustees and Council members) to be incredibly knowledgeable and diligent, with a strong sense of their responsibilities to COPE and to the wider community of publishers, editors, scholars and academic institutions that it serves. COPE provides a vital role as an industry body in providing leadership on best practice in relation to publication ethics – offering guidance and support in multiple languages on matters including retraction, plagiarism, authorship disputes and paper mills. It runs webinars and seminars to support and educate the scholarly publishing community and it offers forums for its members to discuss and seek advice on particularly complex and challenging ethical cases.
COPE is well established and widely recognised within the publishing sphere, with most of the world’s leading publishers and journals as members. It has established core practices to which members are required to adhere. More recently, it has expanded its membership to include academic institutions and is seeking to work more closely with university research integrity offices to provide even greater support to the broader scholarly community.
3. What insights have you gained while working as a Trustee that can help academic publishers like SAGE and what have you been able to bring to your role as Associate Vice President of Research at SAGE?
Responsibility for the integrity of the publication record is shared across authors, journal editors, reviewers, publishers, academic institutions and funders. No one organisation or individual has universal authority over the academic record, and it is impossible for COPE or other guidance to cover every potential scenario.
As a publisher I have long been aware of the challenges that can arise when there is a dispute about the validity of a piece of research. Cases are often not clear cut and require careful handling, expert investigation and, often, navigation of a range of perspectives. It can sometimes be difficult to glean intent and thereby to differentiate deliberate misconduct from honest error. With professional reputations at stake, tempers can become frayed, and this takes a toll on everyone involved. My colleagues at SAGE and I work hard to act with diligence and integrity when cases arise and must recognise when we make mistakes. It is essential to support intellectual freedom and editorial independence, whilst also maintaining standards and supporting best practice.
As a COPE Trustee I have been able to gain insights that help with my work as part of SAGE’s Research Integrity Group, which is constantly working to improve SAGE’s guidance to authors, editors and reviewers. I have also gained new insights into the sheer volume and complexity of the issues that arise. With 2-3 million academic articles published globally every year, it is to be expected that a percentage of these will be flawed, either due to honest error or due to deliberate manipulation of the research or publication process. It is estimated that 500-600 articles are retracted each year. Retraction Watch’s database contains nearly 39,000 items in total, which includes not only >35,000 retractions but also corrections and expressions of concern. Whilst these numbers sound alarming, and the impact of complex cases on time, resources and professional forbearance is significant, I take some comfort from the improvements they reflect in publishing practises, editorial scrutiny and a willingness from stakeholders to take action to correct the academic record.
4. Can you give a real-life example of how COPE has assisted in ensuring scholarly integrity, whether before or after the fact?
COPE members bring specific publication ethics issues to the Forum for discussion and advice. The cases are available to read, with advice given and follow up comments from the member who submits the case. There are over 600 cases in the database, each one of which represents a real-life example of how COPE has assisted in ensuring scholarly integrity – with topics ranging from peer review manipulation to conflicts of interest, from data integrity issues to questions of academic freedom.
COPE’s discussion documents are also important contributions to the understanding of emerging/ complex topics affecting research integrity and publication ethics. Recent examples include Diversity and Inclusivity, AI in Decision Making, and Predatory Publishing. As Chair of COPE’s DEIA subcommittee, I am working on a discussion document on the topic of offensive content in the archive, which I hope will provide some useful advice to the many publishers and journals who are grappling with how to address archival content that may be problematic in terms of content or methodology.
5. What do you think will be the greatest challenges to scholarly integrity in the future?
Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous groups and individuals who are willing to exploit the system via increasingly sophisticated use of technology – whether through image manipulation, data fabrication, or production of fraudulent manuscripts. All of us engaged in the process of publication of scholarly research need to play our part in tackling such behaviour, by working together. An example of such collaboration is COPE’s paper mills working group which recently published a report and set of recommendations on the subject. There are other initiatives in which SAGE and other publishers are actively participating, including STM’s Integrity Hub, which harnesses technology to enable publishers to robustly and legitimately share information and experiences in order to check articles for research integrity issues.
There is no system that will stop 100% of problematic papers from finding their way through to publication. However, by working together we can continually improve our processes in the first place and correct the record when problems do occur.
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