A guide to publishing ethics for reviewers
By Sara Treneman
When publishing academic papers, it is very important that the research, peer review, and publication are carried out in an ethical manner. SAGE is committed to ethical peer review and is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). This introduction to publishing ethics will explain how you can help a journal’s editorial team to ensure that peer review is ethical and independent.
1. Know your stuff!
Depending on your experience as a reviewer, you may not know much about the peer review process and ethics. Before you start writing a review it is always best to take some time to read over the resources available to you on SAGE’s Reviewer Gateway, including our guide on becoming a peer reviewer, as well as COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
2. Conflicts of Interest
The handling editor will check that you are an expert in your field and do not have any conflicts of interest with the authors before inviting you to review. However, editors do sometimes accidentally invite reviewers who are not an appropriate choice. If you are invited to review a paper but you are from the same institution as the authors, have collaborated with them in the past three years, or do not have the right knowledge to provide a review, please let the Editor know straight away. You can also help editors to only invite you to review the right papers by keeping your affiliation and expertise keywords up to date in your account on a journal’s submission site.
If you don’t have time to review but want to ask a junior researcher to review instead, SAGE encourages that but please ask for permission from the editor first. The editor will then be able to make sure the junior researcher gets the support and recognition they deserve for reviewing.
3. Confidentiality
Confidentiality is very important when carrying out peer review – for both you and the authors of the paper. When you are reviewing, please do not share the paper with anyone else, nor discuss the paper or any ethical concerns you have about it with anyone but the editor. You should also make sure that you do not include your name or affiliation in your review comments, so that you remain anonymous. In addition, for double anonymised journals, you should also tell the editor if you find out who the author of the paper is or if the manuscript document hasn’t been properly anonymised.
4. Keeping it professional
Even if you think a paper is pretty poor and you wouldn’t recommend publishing it, your comments should still be fair, impartial and only address the quality of the research (even if the outcome was null or negative). Don’t be rude and make sure to avoid discriminatory or other offensive language in your review. The editors can edit your review before it is sent to the authors or choose not to include your comments at all if the language is considered inappropriate.
While it is okay to ask for your work to be cited in a paper you are reviewing, make sure that the paper is actually relevant and that you don’t ask for more than one or two citations per review. Asking for excessive citations is unethical and can be considered citation manipulation.
5. Ethics
One of the most important things you can do as a reviewer is to inform the editor of any ethical concerns you have about a paper you have been invited to review. This could include:
· You suspect the paper has been submitted or published elsewhere. For example, you were asked to review the paper by two different journals simultaneously or in a very short period.
· You suspect either part or all of the work has been plagiarised, or duplicated from the same author’s previously published work.
· You suspect that the research was not carried out in an ethical manner, the data was manipulated in some way, or that authors have not disclosed relevant conflicts of interest, funding, or permissions to use data.
SAGE understands that the role that reviewers play in the publication process is invaluable, both through the expertise they provide and their role in peer review ethics. We offer a number of rewards to thank reviewers who review for our journals. You can find out more information here.
