ICMJE, COPE and GPP 2022: The Distinct Scopes of Three Publication Ethics Authorities

ICMJE sets recommendations mainly for authorship, contributorship and manuscript preparation across general medical journals. COPE provides guidance and process for handling publication-ethics problems once they arise — misconduct allegations, authorship disputes, redundant publication. GPP 2022 governs the specific case of company-sponsored biomedical research, setting expectations for industry, academic and professional-writer roles in that research's publication.

ICMJE: authorship and manuscript preparation

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' Recommendations set out, among other things, the four criteria a contributor must meet to qualify for authorship: substantial contribution to the work's conception or data, drafting or critically revising it, final approval of the version published, and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work1. Contributors who do not meet all four criteria belong in an acknowledgments section with their specific contribution described, not as listed authors. ICMJE's current guidance also directly addresses AI-assisted writing tools: such tools cannot be listed as authors, because they cannot take responsibility for the work, and their use must be disclosed.

COPE: management of publication-ethics cases

The Committee on Publication Ethics provides its Core Practices — ten practices that replaced COPE's earlier 2004 Code of Conduct for Editors — along with flowcharts for specific scenarios such as suspected redundant publication, authorship disputes, and suspected data fabrication2. Whereas ICMJE largely concerns the expected form of a well-prepared manuscript and author list at submission, COPE is the reference to which editors and publishers turn once a specific ethics problem must be investigated and resolved.

GPP 2022: company-sponsored research

GPP 2022, led by DeTora and colleagues and published in Annals of Internal Medicine, is the current update to Good Publication Practice (superseding GPP3 from 2015), and it addresses the specific governance needs of company-sponsored biomedical research — how sponsors, academic investigators and professional medical writers should each be credited and involved, and how the sponsor's role should be disclosed3. It exists as a distinct standard because company sponsorship introduces disclosure and independence questions that ICMJE's general authorship criteria and COPE's general misconduct-handling guidance do not specifically address.

Key points

Practical application

Frequently asked questions

@misc{icmje_cope_gpp_2022_2026,
  author       = {{Pubrica Academy}},
  title        = {ICMJE, COPE and GPP 2022: The Distinct Scopes of Three Publication Ethics Authorities},
  howpublished = {Pubrica},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {oct},
  url          = {https://pubrica.com/academy/concepts-definitions/icmje-cope-gpp-2022/},
  note         = {Accessed: <span data-cite-acc="iso">2026-10-15</span>}
}

Is this about who should be listed as an author? → ICMJE's four authorship criteria.
Has a specific ethics concern already been raised (dispute, suspected misconduct)? → COPE's relevant flowchart.
Is this a company-sponsored study and the question is about sponsor/investigator/writer roles or disclosure? → GPP 2022.