Dear Colleagues
The recent pointed incidents and publicity on coercive citations and research integrity in the social sciences is a real and important commentary on the integrity of our science. In an informal way, a few of us (Deborah Rupp, Steven Rogelberg, Steve Kozlowski, Fred Morgeson and Jason Colquitt) got together to talk more about this. We thought as a journal editor community we need to make a strong and public stance regarding the ethicality of our science and more specifically on our publication process. To that end, after much iteration and input, we created a voluntary code of journal editor ethics. The code can be found at the following website:
http://editorethics.uncc.edu/
The code was initially distributed to the Editors of the Journals ranked in the 2010 Journal Citation Reports® (JCR), published by Thomson Reuters (formerly ISI), in the categories Psychology, Applied, and Management (181 total Editors). Editors listed in that document were contacted April /May 2012, as well as the editors of management journals listed in 2012 Financial Times rankings. Since then, the code has been forwarded to a large number of scholarly communities spanning a variety of disciplines.
As you can see, the response from editors has been fantastic, as over 125 Editors and Associate Editors have strongly affirmed their commitment to the code.
Few key notes:
- The website allows the scholarly community to comment on the code, journal practices, etc. Please use this feature and check-in to see comments posted by others.
- This is code 1.0. It is just a start on a path. It is not a perfect document. It will continue to be improved over time with the input of the community.
- The website contains resources on best practices in journal editing integrity as well as resources for journals and scholars.
It is our sincere hope that this is one of many steps that can be taken to not only preserve the integrity of our science, but also toprotect and give voice to the scholarly community.
Best,
Steven Rogelberg and Deb Rupp