Template:WikiJournal/Draft of duties of the editorial board

Duties of the editorial board

Editorial Board Members should have a set of talents, experience, and competencies that will best fulfill the needs of WikiJournal. The full names and affiliations of the Editorial Board Members should be displayed online.

Editorial Board Members must keep the confidentiality of works and author identities unless permission has been granted to disclose such material or information. Members of the editorial board must not retain such works for their personal use.

Scientific misconduct

The Editorial Board Members should inform institutions if they suspect misconduct by their researchers, and provide evidence to support these concerns, such as analysis of text similarity in cases of suspected plagiarism, or evidence of inappropriate image manipulation. They should cooperate with investigations and respond to institutions’ questions about misconduct allegations. They should be prepared to issue retractions or corrections when provided with findings of misconduct arising from investigations. They should should correct or retract findings that are invalid or unreliable, both when caused by misconduct and by honest errors. Publications should be retracted if they are evidenced to be generally unreliable, while on the other hand a correction should be made in cases where only a small part of the publication is affected while the majority of findings and conclusions are valid.

Editorial Board Members should investigate allegations of misconduct targeted at peer reviewers for the journal. Yet, However, Editorial Board Members may be obliged to protect the identity of whistleblowers.

In cases of scientific misconduct involving several journals, these journals should cooperate and share information as required to resolve the issues.

The Editorial Board Members should aim at keeping communications relating to ongoing misconduct investigations confidential between parties.

Expression of concern

An Expression of Concern may be used to inform readers about serious allegations likely to affect the reliability or integrity of an article. Expressions of Concern should not be viewed as ‘milder’ versions of retractions. The editorial board should consider issuing an Expression of Concern if:

• There is inconclusive evidence scientific misconduct by the authors
• There is evidence that the findings are unreliable, but there is no institution or entity available to properly investigate the case
• There is reason to believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
• An investigation is underway but a decision thereof will not be available for a considerable time

Correction

The editorial board should consider issuing a correction if:

• A small portion of an otherwise reliable publication is evidenced to be misleading, particularly if it appears to be an honest error such as a methodological error or a miscalculation
• The author list is incorrect. For example, a deserving author may have been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria may have been included

Retraction

The editorial board should consider retracting a publication if:

• There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of honest error or scientific misconduct such as data fabrication
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper permission or justification for publication in WikiJournal of Medicine as well
• It contains plagiarism
• It reports unethical research

Retractions are not usually appropriate in cases where the authorship needs to be changed but there is no reason to doubt the validity of the findings.

A retraction statement must be added in each retraced article. A retraction statements should:

• Be clearly identifiable as a retraction statement, including having a title starting "Retraction statement"
• Include the reasons for the retraction
• Distinguish between cases of misconduct and honest error to encourage researchers to report errors when they occur and ensure no stigma is attached to this.
• Be linked to the retracted article and be open access
• Clearly identify which article it refers to, by at least title and authors
• Be published promptly after the retraction decision
• State that the editorial board has made the retraction decision

If a retraction is due to the actions of only some of the authors, the statement should mention this. However, authorship entails some degree of joint responsibility for the entire article, so the author list of an article should not change after retraction.

A retraction statement may undergo amendments by consensus of the editorial board.

Further reading

• Retraction guidelines, by COPE
• Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases, by COPE