Elsevier Launches Publishing Ethics Resource Kit

Amsterdam, March 2008 – Elsevier, the world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced today the launch of its External link Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK).

Launching PERK at the Elsevier Editors’ Conference in Singapore, Mark Seeley, Senior Vice President and General Legal Counsel, described PERK as being “a single point of access for information and guidelines on publishing ethics providing our Journal Editors with the support they need in dealing with issues of publishing ethics.”

PERK is an online resource which contains links to Elsevier and non-Elsevier policy and procedures documents, decision trees and flow charts for dealing with different forms of publishing ethics abuse with the recommended action that can be followed, as well as COPE (External link Committee On Publication Ethics) charts for a second opinion. It also contains examples of appropriate letters for various situations and a large resource of useful information structured in the form of Questions and Answers.

As part of our commitment to the protection and enhancement of the peer-review process, we have a responsibility to assist the scientific community in all aspects of publishing ethics” says Martin Tanke, Managing Director S&T Journal Publishing. “In the past months we have been the first major scientific publisher to commit to full membership for all its publications in COPE and we are one of six scientific publishers participating in the CrossRef Association’s pilot plagiarism software called External link CrossCheck. By launching the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit as well, we improve our efforts even more to meet this responsibility”.