A new report by the Committee on Publication Ethics explores the challenges and concerns of hundreds of arts, humanities and social sciences editors.
In the first stage of the research, 20 key issues were identified. In the Survey stage of the research, respondents reported the issues that they felt were the most serious, the most widespread and identified the topics they felt least confident in addressing.
20 key issues identified
- Addressing language and writing quality barriers while remaining inclusive
- Assessing contribution and co-authorship claims
- Assuring fair representation of new voices and diverse perspectives
- Data and/or image fabrication issues
- Dealing with different cultural or international publication practices, eg, authorship attributions
- Dealing with post-publication corrections and retractions
- Detecting plagiarism and poor attribution standards
- Difficulties in upholding anonymity of authors and/or reviewers during peer review
- Fraudulent submissions
- Intellectual property and copyright issues
- Issues around the way in which authors receive and respond to criticism
- Issues handling responses from reviewers to authors
- Issues of self-plagiarism
- Issues of submitting the smallest-publishable-unit (also known as ‘salami publishing’)
- Managing complaints and appeals
- Potential conflict of interest between authors and reviewers
- Predatory publishing
- Querying data reproducibility
- Recognising and dealing with bias in reviewer comments
- Responding to concerns about so-called controversial research topics/authors/communities/methods
What issues do journal editors think are the most serious?
- Detecting plagiarism and poor attribution standards
- Fraudulent submissions
- Data and/or image fabrication issues
What issues do journal editors think are the most widespread?
- Addressing language and writing quality barriers while remaining inclusive
- Detecting plagiarism and poor attribution standards
- Recognising and dealing with bias in reviewer comments
What issues are they experiencing most frequently as a journal editor?
- Addressing language and writing quality barriers while remaining inclusive
- Issues around the way in which authors receive and respond to criticism
- Detecting plagiarism and poor attribution standards
Which issues are editors least confident in dealing with?
- Data and/or image fabrication issues
- Fraudulent submissions (nearly 20 percent of editors had direct experience with fraudulent submissions, from hoax articles to articles written by someone other than the named author)
- Intellectual property and copyright issues
Routledge was a partner in this research.
Next steps
COPE considers this report a “useful first step in understanding publications ethics issues for arts, humanities, and social sciences journal editors”. Next steps may include “a more detailed review of individual COPE resources, to establish where adaptations for specific arts, humanities, and social sciences needs are required…. Further research could focus on engaging with editors in non-English speaking territories and those from disciplines with the lowest current levels of awareness and engagement”.