LONDON – June 10, 2010 — The global publisher Informa Healthcare has announced today that all of its 170 journals have been accepted for membership by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE). This follows a long-standing commitment by the publisher to the advancement of publication ethics, particularly in relation to issues raised by research funded by the pharmaceutical industry.
Liz Wager, Chair of COPE has said ‘COPE welcomes the Informa Healthcare journals. By signing up to COPE they are demonstrating their commitment to high ethical standards and responsible publishing.’
The most notable addition to COPE is the journal Current Medical Research & Opinion. In 2003, the journal published the original Good Publication Practice guidelines for pharmaceutical companies. The guidelines, developed by a group of people working in the pharmaceutical industry, quickly established a common standard for the publication of sponsored research. The journal also introduced a formal transparency policy in 2009, becoming one of the first clinical research journals to require full disclosures from authors, staff and peer-reviewers.
Other key additions from Informa Healthcare to COPE include: the Expert Opinion series, the Critical Review series, Leukemia and Lymphoma, Clinical Toxicology and more than 70 society journals including Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Acta Oncologica and British Journal of Neurosurgery.
Informa Healthcare joins its sister company, Taylor & Francis, as well as other major publishers including Elsevier, Wiley—Blackwell, Springer, Palgrave Macmillan, and Wolters Kluwer whose journals are already COPE members. COPE currently has over 5000 members across a wide range of academic disciplines and in many different countries.
For more information on COPE, visit: http://www.publicationethics.org
For more information on Informa Healthcare, visit: http://www.informahealthcare.com
About COPE
COPE provides a forum for editors of academic journals to discuss issues relating to the integrity of the work submitted to, or published in, their journals. Examples include conflicts of interest, falsification and fabrication of data, plagiarism, unethical experimentation, redundant publication and authorship disputes. COPE members strive to adhere to a common code of conduct and must demonstrate a significant interest in safeguarding the integrity of the academic record.
About Informa Healthcare
Informa Healthcare provides authoritative research and analysis for all sectors of the Life Science, Medicine and Pharmaceutical sectors to better serve the commercial and academic needs within the scientific and clinical communities. Informa Healthcare is a division of Informa plc (London: INF). Informa has more than 150 offices in 40 countries and employs 7,500 staff around the world. Informa Healthcare is headquartered in London with offices in New York, Melbourne, Singapore and Stockholm. For more information, visit: http://www.informahealthcare.com
