International standard for editors

Responsible Research Publishing: International Standards for Editors
A position statement developed at the Second World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22–24, 2010

Abstract

Editors are responsible and should take responsibility for everything they publish.
Editors should make fair and impartial decisions regardless of commercial considerations and ensure a fair and appropriate peer-review process.
Editors should adopt editorial policies that encourage maximum transparency and accountability.
Editors should protect the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when necessary and by pursuing suspected or alleged research and publication misconduct.
Editors should pursue reviewer and editorial misconduct.
Editors should evaluate the ethical conduct of human and animal studies.
Reviewers and parent authors should be told what is expected of them.
Editors should have appropriate policies for handling editorial conflicts.

Introduction
As As guardians and stewards of the research record, editors should encourage authors to strive for and adhere to the highest standards of publication ethics. Furthermore, editors are in a unique position to indirectly encourage responsible research conduct through their policies and processes. To achieve maximum impact within the research community, ideally all editors should adhere to universal standards and best practices. While there are important differences between different fields, and not all areas covered are relevant to every research community, there are important common editing policies, processes, and principles that editors should follow to ensure the integrity of the research record.

These guidelines are a starting point and are directed at journal editors in particular. While books and monographs are important and relevant research records in many fields, guidelines for book editors are beyond the scope of these recommendations. It is hoped that such guidelines can be added to this document in due course.

Editors should consider themselves part of the broader professional publishing community, stay abreast of relevant policies and developments, and ensure that their editorial staff are trained and kept informed of relevant issues.

Being a good editor requires many more principles than those covered here. The suggested principles, policies, and processes are particularly aimed at fostering research and journal integrity.

Editorial Principles 1. Responsibility and Accountability for Journal Content
Editors must assume responsibility for everything they publish and must have procedures and policies to ensure the quality of the material they publish and maintain the integrity of the published record (see paragraphs 4–8).

2. Editorial Independence and Integrity
An important part of the responsibility to make fair and impartial decisions is upholding the principle of editorial independence and integrity.

2.1 Separating Decision-Making from Commercial Considerations
Editors should make decisions solely on academic merit and assume full responsibility for their decisions. Processes must be in place to separate commercial activities within a journal from editorial processes and decisions. Editors should actively disregard publisher pricing policies and strive for broad and affordable accessibility of the material they publish.

Sponsored supplements must undergo the same rigorous quality control and peer review as any other journal content. Decisions about such material should be made in the same manner as any other journal content. Sponsorship and the sponsor's role should be clearly stated to readers.

Advertisements should be reviewed to follow journal guidelines, should be clearly distinguishable from other content, and should not in any way be linked to scholarly content.

2.2 Editors' Relationship with the Editor or Journal Owner
Editors should ideally have a written contract that sets out the terms and conditions of their appointment with the editor or journal owner. The principle of editorial independence should be clearly established in this contract. Editors and journal owners should have no role in decisions about the