Ethics
Best practice in this Essential Area of ethics (Table 11) focussed on
the need for transparency in relation to policies explained in the
journal’s author guidelines (for example in relation to preprints,
confidentiality of the review process and any journal checks that were
conducted). In terms of ensuring ethical standards of published
research, journals with best practice asked authors to provide details
of any ethical approvals needed for their research, together with ethics
committee approval and reference numbers where applicable. Journals
reaching high standards also used appropriate tools to check for
potential plagiarism or image manipulation.
Ethics was the highest scoring Essential Area in our quantitative
analysis, with 88% of journals operating good practice on checking for
overlapping text (Q26: R-score = 3), 73% having a plan of how to
respond to ethics issues (Q28: R-score = 3), and 47% have a preprint
policy (Q26: R-score = 3). 41% of journals did not check for image
manipulation even after excluding the 38% non-applicable journals (Q24:
R-score = 1), and 33% journals not explaining their approach on peer
review confidentiality to editors (Q25: R-score = 1).
Obstacles to improving peer review in this area included the lack of
technology solutions (for example with respect to checking for image
manipulation) or not setting clear policies (for example with respect to
preprints).