Publication Ethics
Publication ethics
Publication Ethics for Journal Editors
- Editors should be accountable for everything published in their journal: this includes having measures in place to assess the quality of the material they accept for the journal and a willingness to publish corrections and clarifications when required.
- Editors should act in a fair and balanced way when carrying out their duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religious or political beliefs.
- Editors should provide guidance to authors and reviewers on everything that is expected of them.
Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure Humanities and Social Sciences publications, public trust in findings, and that people receive credit for their ideas. It is important to avoid:
Publication Ethics for Peer Review
-Editors should make decisions on which articles to publish based on quality and suitability for the journal and without interference from the journal owner/publisher.
-A description of peer review processes should be published, and editors should be ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.
-Editors should handle submissions in a fair, unbiased and timely manner and treat all manuscripts as confidential, for distribution to others for purposes of peer-review only.
-Journals should have policies and systems in place to ensure that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decisions, and editors should handle submissions for funded issues in the same way as for standard issues, so that articles are accepted entirely on their academic merit and without commercial influence. A declared mechanism for authors to appeal against editorial decisions.
Data fabrication and falsification
Data fabrication means the researcher did not actually do the study, but faked the data. Data falsification means the researcher did the experiment, but then changed some of the data.
Plagiarism:
Taking the ideas and work of other scientists without giving them credit is unfair and dishonest. Copying even one sentence from someone else’s manuscript, or even one of your own that has previously been published, without proper citation is considered plagiarism—use your own words instead.
Multiple submissions
It is unethical to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Doing this wastes the time of editors and peer reviewers, and can damage the reputation of the authors and the journals if published in more than one journal as the later publication will have to be retracted.
Redundant publications (or ‘salami’ publications
This means publishing many very similar manuscripts based on the same experiment. Combining your results into one very robust paper is more likely to be of interest to a selective journal. Editors are likely to reject a weak paper that they suspect is a result of salami slicing. Many journals have tools and processes in place to identify researchers that engage in unethical behavior. If you are caught your manuscript may be rejected without review and your institution informed.
Publication Ethics for Authors
-Authors should declare that all work in their submitted piece is original, and cite content from other sources appropriately to avoid plagiarism.
-Authors must ensure their contribution does not contain any libelous matter or infringe any copyright or other intellectual property rights or any other rights of any third party.
-The listing of authors should accurately reflect who carried out the research and wrote the article, and the order of authorship should be jointly determined by all of the co-authors.
-All authors should be aware of the submission of their paper to the journal and agree to the main author signing an IPR form on their behalf.
-Authors should ensure that their manuscript as submitted is not under consideration (or accepted for publication) elsewhere. Where sections of the manuscript overlap with published or submitted content, this should be acknowledged and cited.
-Authors should obtain permission to reproduce any content from third-party sources (text and images).Unfortunately, the Press is unable to publish third-party content for which permission has not been obtained (excluding content covered by fair dealing).
-The source of funding for a research project should be listed on all funded research papers. Other sources of support (including funding for Open Access article processing charges) should also be clearly identified in the manuscript, typically in an acknowledgement.
-Authors should declare any potential conflicts of interest relating to a specific article.
-Authors should inform the editor or publisher if there is a significant error in their published piece, and work with the editor to publish an erratum, addendum or retraction where necessary.
-Authors have the right to appeal editorial decisions.
