Economic Thought Ethical Guidelines for Authors, Commentators and Editors*

Ethical guidelines for authors

We expect all authors submitting to Economic Thought to adhere to the following ethical guidelines:

• All authors must warrant that their article is their own original work, which does not infringe the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, and cannot be construed as plagiarizing any other published work, including their own previously published work.
• All authors named on the paper are equally held accountable for the content of a submitted manuscript or published paper.
• The corresponding author must ensure all named co-authors consent to publication and to being named as a co-author. All persons who have made significant scientific or literary contributions to the work reported should be named as co-authors.
• Authors must not submit a manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously.
• Authors should not submit previously published work, nor work which is based in substance on previously published work, either in part or whole.
• Authors must appropriately cite all relevant publications. Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, should not be used or reported in the author’s work unless fully cited, and with the permission of that third party.
• Authors must make available all necessary formal and documented ethical approval from an appropriate research ethics committee, including evidence of anonymisation and informed consent from the client(s) or patient(s) studied, if appropriate.
• Authors must follow national and international procedures that govern the ethics of experimentation on humans and animals. Research reported in the paper must be conducted in an ethical and responsible manner, in full compliance with all relevant codes of experimentation and legislation. All papers which report in vivo experiments or clinical trials on humans or animals must include a written statement in the Methods section that such work was conducted with the formal approval of the local human subject or animal care committees, and that clinical trials have been registered as legislation requires.
• Authors must include all appropriate warnings concerning any specific and particular hazards that may be involved in carrying out experiments or procedures described in the article or involved in instructions, materials, or formulae in the article; include explicitly relevant safety precautions, and cite, if an accepted standard or code of practice is relevant, a reference to the relevant standard or code.
• If required, authors must facilitate access to data sets described in the article.
• Authors must avoid making defamatory statements in submitted articles which could be construed as impugning any person’s reputation.
• Authors must declare any potential conflict of interest – be it professional or financial – which could be held to arise with respect to the article.
• Authors must disclose all sources of funding for the research reported in the paper.

Ethical guidelines for commentators

We ask all commentators to make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical guidelines for Economic Thought articles:

• Commentators must give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication, and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
• Commentators should declare any potential conflict of interest including any relationship with the author that may potentially bias their comment.
• Commentators should provide a constructive, comprehensive, evidenced, and appropriately substantial comment.
• Commentators must avoid making statements in their comment which might be construed as impugning any person’s reputation.
• Commentators should call to the journal editors’ attention to any significant similarity between the manuscript under consideration and any published paper or submitted manuscripts of which they are aware.

Ethical guidelines for journal editors

The editors of Economic Thought will make every reasonable effort to adhere to the following ethical guidelines:

• Journal editors should give unbiased consideration to each manuscript submitted for consideration for publication, and should judge each on its merits, without regard to race, religion, nationality, sex, seniority, or institutional affiliation of the author(s).
• If a journal editor receives a claim that a submitted article is under consideration elsewhere or has already been published, then he or she has a duty to investigate the matter.
• Journal editors may reject a submitted manuscript without resort to formal peer review if they consider the manuscript to be inappropriate for the journal and outside its scope.
• Journal editors should make all reasonable effort to process submitted manuscripts in an efficient and timely manner.
• Journal editors should arrange for responsibility of the peer review of any original research article authored by themselves to be delegated to a member of the editorial or advisory board as appropriate.
• If a journal editor is presented with convincing evidence that the main substance or conclusions of an article published in the journal are erroneous, then the journal editor should facilitate publication of an appropriate corrigendum or erratum.
• Any data or analysis presented in a submitted manuscript should not be used in a journal editor’s own research except with the consent of the author.

*This policy is based on Taylor & Francis Group’s statement on publishing ethics, available at
http://editorresources.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/?p=84
and
http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/preparation/ethics.asp
and used as a source with permission.