Annual COPE / ICMJE Compliance Review

Overview

“Our website says we follow COPE guidelines. Nobody here has read them in three years, and I am not sure our retraction policy would survive a real case.” Indexing reviewers and authors take a journal’s ethics statements at face value until something goes wrong; then they look at whether the procedures exist and were followed. An annual review keeps the policies current with COPE’s revisions and shows leadership and indexers that ethics governance is active, not decorative.

NeucitePress reviews your journal against all COPE Core Practices, and against the ICMJE Recommendations for medical journals, examines how complaints, corrections and misconduct allegations are actually handled, and delivers a gap report with a prioritized remediation plan and policy templates.

Who this is for: journals preparing for DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science or MEDLINE applications, publishers establishing an ethics framework across a portfolio, and journals that have had a complaint and want an independent view.

What’s Included

• Core Practices assessment — evaluation against every COPE Core Practice: allegations of misconduct, authorship and contributorship, complaints and appeals, conflicts of interest, data and reproducibility, ethical oversight, intellectual property, journal management, peer review processes, and post-publication discussion and corrections
• ICMJE alignment check for medical and health-sciences journals
• Policy review — ethics statements, retraction and correction policy, conflict-of-interest disclosure, authorship policy, reviewer guidelines
• Process evaluation — how complaints and misconduct allegations are received, documented and resolved in practice, with a review of sample cases
• Gap report with severity ratings, a prioritized remediation plan and COPE-aligned policy templates
• Year-on-year comparison for journals repeating the review annually

How It Works

What Stays With Your Editors

The journal’s editors keep final authority over reviewer selection, editorial assessment, acceptance and the handling of every ethics case. NeucitePress runs the review and provides the findings, plan and templates; adoption of the recommendations is the journal’s decision.

Important Limitations

• COPE does not certify or accredit journals, and this review does not confer COPE membership or any COPE status. It assesses alignment with COPE’s published Core Practices.
• ICMJE publishes recommendations and is not a certifying body; the ICMJE check assesses alignment only.
• This is an audit. Implementation of the remediation plan is separate (see the Editorial Policy Suite and ICMJE alignment services).
• Not legal advice. Covers one journal; portfolio pricing on request.

Common Questions

Do we need COPE membership first?
No. The review assesses against COPE’s public Core Practices whether or not the journal is a member. Membership is a separate decision and application to COPE.

Why annual?
COPE revises its guidance, editors and boards change, and indexers re-evaluate journals periodically. An annual review with a year-on-year comparison shows that governance is maintained.

Can this be bundled with the ICMJE alignment service?
Yes; medical journals commonly combine the two, and the bundle is offered at a 15 percent discount.

Every engagement can begin with the Journal Health Check.