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In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:
Is it ethical to review a book manuscript for a publisher and then later publish in a journal your review of that updated book? A colleague told me he thought it was a conflict of interest. I'm wondering what everyone at the cocoon thinks.
I'd be curious to hear why the OP's colleague thought it's a conflict of interest.
What do readers think?
Yes, it is ethical. No, there is no conflict of interest. Go for it.
This seems non-problematic to me. I’m not sure why it would be a conflict.
I know a bit about book reviews – I commissioned and edited about 600 of them for Metascience over the last 10 years. There is a potential conflict of interest here. You first need to disclose to the journal that you did referee the manuscript for the publisher. Then, assuming they are fine with that, you need to disclose in the review (or if it is a Springer/Nature journal, in the “Conflicts of Interest” section) that you reviewed the manuscript. Readers of your review have a right to know this.
And as a matter of form you should not just reiterate your criticisms from your referee report that the author did not address. Remember, it is the author’s book, not yours (or the one you would have written).
I can see why someone might worry about a conflict of interest here: any devastating objections should be raised during the peer-review process, but someone with ambitions to publish a book review might ‘save’ their key objections so that they have something to say in the book review.
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