The aim of this project is to foster greater awareness among humanities scholars and editors about ethical issues in publishing and to provide a starting point for a collective discussion within the scholarly community about what core values and practices might be shared or developed. Since many journals in the humanities are already members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), this project aims to bring about more active engagement of editors and scholars in the humanities in the ongoing discussions and developments of research and publication ethics under the COPE umbrella.
COPE’s role is to assist editors of scholarly journals and their publishers in their endeavor to preserve and promote the integrity of the scholarly record through policies and practices that reflect the current best principles of transparency and integrity. COPE’s most recent recommendations are intended to reflect these aims. COPE recently consolidated their earlier Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers into one (much shorter) document entitled Core Practices (available to download as an A4 poster.) The Core Practices are applicable to all involved in publishing the scholarly literature: editors and their journals, publishers, and institutions.
You can learn much more about the Core Practices on the COPE website: publicationethics.org.
