Ethics
Best practice in this Essential Area of ethics (Table 11) focussed on the need for transparency in relation to policies explained in the journal’s author guidelines (for example in relation to preprints, confidentiality of the review process and any journal checks that were conducted). In terms of ensuring ethical standards of published research, journals with best practice asked authors to provide details of any ethical approvals needed for their research, together with ethics committee approval and reference numbers where applicable. Journals reaching high standards also used appropriate tools to check for potential plagiarism or image manipulation.
Ethics was the highest scoring Essential Area in our quantitative analysis, with 88% of journals operating good practice on checking for overlapping text (Q26: R-score = 3), 73% having a plan of how to respond to ethics issues (Q28: R-score = 3), and 47% have a preprint policy (Q26: R-score = 3). 41% of journals did not check for image manipulation even after excluding the 38% non-applicable journals (Q24: R-score = 1), and 33% journals not explaining their approach on peer review confidentiality to editors (Q25: R-score = 1).
Obstacles to improving peer review in this area included the lack of technology solutions (for example with respect to checking for image manipulation) or not setting clear policies (for example with respect to preprints).