A publisher was contacted by an editor-in-chief of one of their journals. The editor-in-chief wanted to submit an article written by themselves and one of the journal editorial board members. The article related to treatment provided by the editor to a patient, who was also the coauthor of the paper.
The publisher was concerned about the ethical issues that would need to be addressed if the editor-in-chief submitted this article to the journal.
Questions for COPE Council
- Would the co-author need to disclose that they are also the patient referred to in the article?
- Would it be better to have open peer review for this manuscript to ensure full transparency of the review process?
- Would it be ethically safer to have the editor-in-chief submit the article to another journal?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
It is not uncommon for members of editorial panels to submit articles to their journals. This often happens in small specialty journals. The issue in all such cases is to have clear processes—the paper should be reviewed outside of the regular journal system and by independent experts. WAME has a good policy on this:
'Editors should not make any editorial decisions or be involved in the editorial process if they have or a close family member has a conflict of interest (COI) (financial or otherwise) in a particular manuscript submitted to their journal. For example, if editors have political/religious COI or personal COI with respect to the authors or their work, the editors should remove themselves from the decision-making process. An editor may also be in a COI if a manuscript is submitted from their own academic department or from their institution (if it is small); in such situations, they should have explicit policies, made in advance, for how to manage it. When editors submit their own work to their journal, a colleague in the editorial office should manage the manuscript and the editor/author should recuse himself or herself from discussion and decisions about it. Some journals list editors’ competing interests on their website, but this is not a standard practice. Readers should refer to the WAME Policy on the Relationship Between Journal Editors-in-chief and Owners for additional comment about COI as it relates to editors.'
Researchers in healthcare research have shifted their thoughts about patients as partners in research over the years. Patients as authors is becoming a standard in medicine as can be seen in this discussion.
The BMJ Publishing Group has a campaign for patient-partnership.
The editor should also consider if the authors fulfil the requirements for authorship based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).