Scribd
Upload
22 views2 pages

AJP - Ethics in Publishing

The article discusses the ethical responsibilities of journal editors in the academic publishing process, highlighting issues such as editorial misconduct and the impact of competition on ethical standards. The author shares a personal experience of a paper submission that resulted in misattribution of authorship due to editorial negligence. The piece calls for greater accountability from editors to ensure the integrity of scientific records and promote ethical practices in publishing.

Uploaded by

Gurvinder Kalra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
22 views2 pages

AJP - Ethics in Publishing

The article discusses the ethical responsibilities of journal editors in the academic publishing process, highlighting issues such as editorial misconduct and the impact of competition on ethical standards. The author shares a personal experience of a paper submission that resulted in misattribution of authorship due to editorial negligence. The piece calls for greater accountability from editors to ensure the integrity of scientific records and promote ethical practices in publishing.

Uploaded by

Gurvinder Kalra
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

This article appeared in a journal published by Elsevier.

The attached
copy is furnished to the author for internal non-commercial research
and education use, including for instruction at the authors institution
and sharing with colleagues.
Other uses, including reproduction and distribution, or selling or
licensing copies, or posting to personal, institutional or third party
websites are prohibited.
In most cases authors are permitted to post their version of the
article (e.g. in Word or Tex form) to their personal website or
institutional repository. Authors requiring further information
regarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies are
encouraged to visit:
http://www.elsevier.com/authorsrights
Author's personal copy

Asian Journal of Psychiatry 6 (2013) 635

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Asian Journal of Psychiatry


journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ajp

Letter to the Editor

The ball is in your (Journal editor’s) court: Newer wrong practice. It plays spoilsports between authors by creating
insights into the ethics & ‘un’-ethics in mistrust and raises doubts about journals that accept email
publishing submissions making it difficult to track submitted papers. Editors
could help by streamlining submissions through central-systems
A journal editor’s work includes receiving papers, ensuring (e.g., manuscriptcentral) and effective time management. A paper
journal suitability, facilitating peer-review process, and giving a published late may not be as much of a serious concern as a paper
decision, with internet having made the author-editor-reviewer published wrongly or with wrong affiliations!
interface more interactive. To survive cut-throat competition, The editorial misconduct in our case needs mention, as this can
journals often boast of faster reviews, attracting authors to submit be a powerful deterrent to unethical-behavior. Also if the scientific
their works, realizing little that this could be just another readership expects accountability from authors, they should also
unethical trap! learn to expect it from editors. After all, it is not just authors who
I had first-hand experience of submitting a paper to a journal. This should be projected in ethics and un-ethics of writing, but also the
paper with equal contribution from three authors remained editors! Awareness of such issues will promote highest ethical-
submitted to the journal for months before review and acceptance. standards in academic publishing (Kempers, 2001). Editors need to
While we eagerly waited for paper-proofs, we were shocked when maintain the integrity of scientific records which must take
only one of us got the journal’s print-issue and was mentioned as the precedence over other duties (Marcovitch, 2007) but at the same
paper’s sole-author. We immediately mailed this to the editor who time, they also need to work in the best interest of authors.
replied that an addendum would be added in a subsequent issue. This
prompted me to read more about ethics-in-publishing. To my Conflict of interest
surprise, ethics in publishing mostly focused on authors with little
mention of what editors should or should not do! Serebnick (1991) I declare that I do not have any conflicts of interest.
correctly points out how ethical responsibilities of editors are less
clear (Gollogly and Momen, 2006). While Marcovitch (2007) References
discusses case-vignettes of author-misconducts, he merely makes
Gollogly, L., Momen, H., 2006. Ethical dilemmas in scientific publication: pitfalls and
passing-references to editorial-misconduct. Unethical-author-prac- solutions for editors. Rev. Saude Publica 40, 24–29.
tices are driven by academic-pressure of publications as pre- Kempers, R.D., 2001. Ethical issues in biomedical publications. Hum. Fertil. (Camb.)
requisites to measure their output (Gollogly and Momen, 2006). 4 (4) 261–266.
Marcovitch, H., 2007. Misconduct by researchers and authors. Gac. Sanit. 21 (6)
On similar lines, pressure of bringing timely issues leads to unethical- 492–499.
editorial-practices. However in both cases such practices put the Serebnick, J., 1991. Identifying unethical practices in journal publishing. Libr.
authors’ and editors’ skills into serious disrepute. Trends 40 (2) 357–372.

The term ‘Ghost authorship’ best described authors’ left out in


the aforesaid paper, with the ghost-ness occurring due to editorial-
misconduct. Allowing the paper to be in-review till the date for
next journal issue comes and then waking-up hurriedly leads to Gurvinder Kalra
such errors. If only our editor would have acted on time! This case Psychiatry Registrar, Northern CCU, Northwestern Mental Health,
gives us two perspectives: the editor allowed journal print to get Melbourne, Australia
through without proof-checks. However this seriously assumes
that the error was knowingly committed. A second moderate Tel.: +61 401 646 935
perspective (avoiding debate) considers it an unintended mistake, E-mail address: kalragurvinder@gmail.com (G. Kalra)
which may happen in journals with high-volume submissions.
Nevertheless, such carelessness on the editor’s part amounts to a 18 March 2013

1876-2018/$ – see front matter ß 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2013.08.065

You might also like

pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy