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In our new "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
What are the norms on journals publishing articles written by editors? I saw a case yesterday and I was surprised it stills happens.
I don't know. I've seen this occur various times over the years and haven't quite known what to make of it.
What do readers think?
I can’t speak for other journals, but, at ETHICS, we practice triple-blind review. So, Associate Editors can submit to ETHICS just as anyone else can. And their submission will be vetted in exactly the same way that other submissions are vetted. Many Associate Editors choose not to submit while they serve as an Associate Editor, but some do. So, there have, I believe, been some cases where an Associate Editor has published in ETHICS while serving as Associate Editor. Of course, Associate Editors must recuse themselves from accepting an invitation to undertake an editorial role or decision regarding their own submission just as they would if they otherwise knew the identity of the author. As Editor-in-Chief, I do not submit to ETHICS. And if I know who wrote a submission, I assign one of the Associate Editors to serve as acting Editor-in-Chief for that submission.
I mean, it depends on how the journal is structured and what is meant by an “editor”, right? To take a concrete case: A while back, Ergo explicitly changed its policy to allow area editors to submit. (Disclosure: I am an area editor and I have a co-authored piece forthcoming, submitted by my co-author after the change of the policy.) The submission is handled no differently: the author’s identity is anonymized and handled by another area editor. But Ergo also has like hundreds of area editors. So I don’t see this policy change as particularly problematic?
In general, if there is good reason to think that the review process is no different, I don’t see what is problematic. However, if the journal is not as transparent about the review process, or there is an appearance of favoritism, I can see it as undermining the credibility of the journal. However however, I do also think sometimes people engage in baseless speculation, so we should be conscientious of that when thinking about even the appearances of conflict of interest.
This seems like another place where the appearance of impropriety is just as damaging as actual impropriety. And it’s so easy to avoid.
There are tons of journals, there’s no need to publish in one that you edit…so just publish in one of those other ones and thereby avoid the appearance of impropriety.
I just saw this at an invitation only journal where it is one of the two main editors. That seems obviously problematic (to the extent that I found it very confusing!). But, in case the person who asked this question had that journal in mind, I wondered when I saw it if the editors don’t think of the journal more as a kind of edited collection (more akin to a book collection, or like a special issue of a journal with invited pieces in it), and it is extremely common for editors of both of those sorts of things to include their own articles in them (and I don’t think it is frowned upon at least in the book case).
Anyway, I agree with “why even bother?” though only about main editors of a journal. If someone is just on an editorial board, or if the journal has a structure more like Ergo, it seems completely fine to me.
It’s fine for an editor to publish, but what matters most is fair review and transparency.
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