Applied linguistics journal editor perspectives: Research ethics and academic publishing

Abstract

Concern for research integrity and ethics has been a part of scholarly publishing since the earliest scientific journals were published. At the same time, scholarly publishing is big business. Thus, journal editors must manage publication interests as well as research integrity and ethical issues. As ethics and integrity are deeply embedded in the research process, not only in terms of treatment of human subjects or methods for collecting, analyzing, and presenting but also in all aspects of publishing, we investigate the role of journal editors in scholarly publishing for applied linguistics. Specifically, we examine the issues/challenges applied linguistics journal editors face in relation to research integrity and ethics, their knowledge, beliefs and practices, through an anonymous online survey. Results show that the most serious issue identified by the editors was finding sufficient expert reviewers. Other issues included plagiarism, redundant publications and inappropriate citations. However, in general, editors did not feel most of the listed ethical issues were serious problems (e.g. interference in editorial decisions, inappropriate image manipulation) or they did not know if the issues were a problem (e.g. unacknowledged writers, inappropriate acknowledgements). We conclude by offering recommendations for ways forward and by suggesting further research, including studies with a more dialogic approach which would allow editors to voice their perspectives and investigations of local communities of practice which might supersede universality assumptions of research integrity and ethics.