COPE Alumni

COPE has benefited from many experienced editors and other publishing professionals who have served on its council, and as officers.  The group below some lists some previous council members who have agreed on occasion to continue to represent and speak on behalf of COPE.

James Greenstone 

Council member (2009 – 2012)

Dr Greenstone is a Psychotherapist and Police Behavioral Health Specialist, and has been in practice for over 45 years. He is the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations published by Taylor and Francis. He served as the Director of Psychological Services for the Fort Worth, Texas Police Department and as Adjunct Professor of Law at Texas Wesleyan University School of Law. He was the chief instructor in Hostage and Crisis Negotiations for the North Central Texas Council of Governments and has trained negotiators both nationally and internationally. He is a Professor of Psychology, Forensics and Ethics at Capella University. Dr. (COL) Greenstone serves on the Editorial Board of Military Medicine, International Journal of the Association of Military Surgeons of the United States. 

Trish Groves

Council member (2008 – 2010)

Trish Groves trained in medicine and psychiatry before going to the BMJ, where she is deputy editor and research lead. She is also editor-in-chief of the online only journal BMJ Open. While at the BMJ Trish has been a part time honorary research fellow at the School for Public Policy, UCL; has contributed to European Science Foundation proposals for revising the EU Clinical Trials Directive; served on the council of the Committee on Publication Ethics; and helped develop research reporting statements including CONSORT 2010, SPIRIT, and PRISMA extensions. She has presented for TV and radio in the UK and for the BBC World Service, and she co-wrote the HarperCollins Consumer’s Guide to Mental Health (1996). 

Irene Hames

Council member (2010 – 2013)

After gaining a PhD in cell biology, Irene Hames moved into scientific publishing and has worked on scholarly journals and books for over 30 years. Following a decade as a freelance copy editor, book editor, project manager and trainer, she spent 20 years as the managing editor of a large international science journal (The Plant Journal). Irene has been a member of a number of working parties on peer review, and in 2011 was the specialist advisor to the UK House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee for its inquiry into peer review and the resulting report. She is the author of the book Peer Review and Manuscript Management in Scientific Journals: guidelines for good practice, published by Wiley-Blackwell in association with ALPSP (the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers).She now works as an independent editorial consultant to the publishing, higher education and research sectors, and holds advisory roles with Sense About Science, the International Society of Managing and Technical Editors, and Axios Review. In December 2011 she was made a Fellow of the Society of Biology and sits on the Society’s Research Dissemination Committee.

Harvey Marcovitch

Chair (2006 - 2009)

Harvey Marcovitch was a consultant paediatrician from 1977 - 2001, latterly at Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust and honorary clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford. From 1994-2003 he was editor of Archives of Disease in Childhood and has also been an associate editor, BMJ; syndications editor BMJ Publishing Group; editor of Clinical Risk (Royal Society of Medicine), and Black’s Medical Dictionary.  He is an editorial board member of Acta Paediatrica, Clinical Risk and Annals, Academy of Medicine (Singapore). 

For more than a decade, with Tim Albert, he ran courses for medical editors and authors in Europe, Asia and Australasia. He was chair of COPE from 2006-9 and a director of Council of Science Editors from 2008-2010.

He has authored chapters in How to Write a Paper, edited by George Hall (3rd edition published by BMJ Books) and Medicine for Lawyers edited by Palmer & Wetherill (RSM Press Ltd) and is a contributor to the CSE White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications and the European Assoc. of Science Editors’ Handbook.
His editorials, commentaries and opinion pieces on research and publication misconduct have been published in BMJ,  Med J Austral, Maturitas, J Epidemiol Comm Health, Serials Librarian, Croatian Med J, PLoS Med, Bone & Joint 360, Anesth Analgesia and Gac Sanit (Spanish). .

He was either an officer or co-opted member of the executive committee of the Royal College of Paediatrics & Child Health throughout its first decade and was awarded its honorary Fellowship in 2007 ‘in recognition of outstanding contributions to the objects of the College.’ 

Sabine Kleinert

Vice-chair (2006 – 2012), Council member (2001 – 2006)

Sabine Kleinert studied medicine in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the USA, and trained as a paediatrician and paediatric cardiologist in the UK, Belgium, the USA, and Australia. She joined The Lancet as a full-time Medical Editor in 1998, and is currently Senior Executive Editor. She is Co-Chair of the World Research Integrity Conferences.

Randell Stephenson

Council member (2008 – 2012)

Randell Stephenson was Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geodynamics from 2007 until the end of 2012 and is now Advisory Editor of that journal. He has also co-edited a number of scientific books, most recently Special Publication 340 of the Geological Society of London on the tectonics of the Black Sea-Caucasus region. He is Professor in Lithosphere Geophysics at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland) and previously was Senior Lecturer at the VU University Amsterdam.

Liz Wager

Chair (2009 – 2012), Secretary (2007 – 2009), Council member (2006 – 2007), Member of Education Committee (2003-2006)

Elizabeth (Liz) Wager is a freelance medical writer, editor and trainer. After a zoology degree from Oxford she worked for Blackwell Scientific Publications editing medical books. She then worked as a medical writer in the pharmaceutical industry (for Janssen-Cilag then Glaxo-Wellcome). She set up her own company, Sideview, in 2001. She has run training courses for doctors, journal editors and medical writers on six continents (including courses in Brazil, China, India, Japan, Kenya, Uganda, South Africa, Australia, the USA and all around Europe). She is a member of the ethics committees for the BMJ and the World Association of Medical Editors. She has written a book on publication strategy and co-authored one on peer review and is a co-author of Good Publication Practice for Pharmaceutical Companies, the European Medical Writers Association guidelines on the role of medical writers and the Wiley-Blackwell Best Practice Guidelines on Publication Ethics. She has published research on various aspects of peer review including two Cochrane reviews, and in 2010 was awarded a PhD for a thesis on the effects of peer review and other editorial interventions on reporting medical research. She is Visiting Professor at the University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia

Steve Yentis

Council member (2006 – 2012)

Steve Yentis has been a Consultant Obstetric Anaesthetist at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital, London, since 1995, an Editor of Anaesthesia since 1999 and Editor-in-Chief since 2009. He also served on the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Obstetric Anesthesia from 1999–2007.