Fairness
Good practice with respect to this Essential Area of fairness (Table 11) is again focussed on transparency around journal policies andhaving a procedure or process in place for implementing the policy. For example, on authorship, handling potential conflicts of interest (of editors and peer reviewers) and maintaining confidentiality of the peer review process.
While many journals ask reviewers to declare conflicts of interest (Q9: 56% R-score = 2), 75% do not collect editor conflicts of interest (Q29: R-score = 1) and 51% have no policy on how to handle such editor conflicts (Q30: R-score = 1).
64% of journals have a policy on authorship (Q41: R-score = 2) but 66% do not ask for a description of author contributions (Q42: R-score = 1).
64% of journals have some method of explaining peer review confidentiality to authors (Q40: R-score = 2) but 27% do not (Q40: R-score =1).
There was also a need to encourage fairness in the peer review process and to discourage peer reviewers from raising unreasonable additional concerns at re-review.
Some journals took a proactive approach to reviewer diversity and particularly encouraged this when peer reviewers were invited. Although journals recognise the benefits of a diverse editorial board in helping to foster diversity of peer reviewers (Ortuzar, 2019), the majority of journals (77%) have no practice on encouraging diversity when selecting reviewers (Q12: R-score = 1); only 12% have good practice (Q12: R-score = 3). 70% have no means for attempting to manage the effects of implicit bias (Q15: R-score = 1).
Obstacles to better practice included an assumption that there was already an awareness of the particular issue, for example with respect to the need to maintain confidentiality of the peer review process, implying there would only be a need to share information if asked. Other obstacles included a lack of understanding about why a change was necessary, for example with respect to declaring editors’ potential conflicts of interest on journal websites; and the lack of clear policy or process, for example with respect to considering diversity when inviting peer reviewers.