APPE encourages all participants in the publishing process to adhere to established principles of ethical publishing. This extends from authors to journal editors, reviewers, journal administrators, and publishing staff.
Editorial independence
Editors have full editorial independence. Although APPE and any publishing partners may discuss strategy, process, and policy with editors, we will never knowingly exert pressure on editors to accept manuscripts for commercial or political reasons. We do, however, expect and encourage OUP-published journals to have clearly defined processes and policies for the handling of contributions by the editor or members of the editorial board to ensure that, where appropriate, these submissions receive an equivalent level of peer review to any other submission.
Peer review and reviewer conduct
APPE supports and refers its editors to the COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. APPE does not support one system of peer review over another (e.g. single-blind, double-blind, open) but encourages journals to publish their review procedure as part of their submission guidelines, for instance:
Manuscripts are reviewed by two independent experts in the relevant area. The reviewers make a scientific assessment and a recommendation to the editors. Reviewers remain unknown to authors. The Handling editor considers the manuscript and the reviewers’ comments before making a final decision either to accept, accept with revision or to reject a manuscript.
Confidentiality
Unless otherwise specified, APPE expects editors and reviewers to handle all submissions in confidence. If a reviewer wishes to delegate the review or seek the opinion of a colleague on a specific aspect of the paper, they are expected to clear this with the editor in the first instance.
Any suggestion that an editor or reviewer is appropriating ideas from a manuscript they handled for a journal will be thoroughly investigated in accordance with the following COPE guidelines.
Peer review fraud
Some journals provide the option for submitting authors to suggest preferred reviewers. It is the responsibility of the lead author to ensure that only genuine reviewers and reviewer contact details are put forward. Any suspected or alleged instances of authors submitting fabricated reviewer details will be thoroughly investigated. If such allegations are proven, the article in question will be immediately rejected or, if already published, retracted. The journal would typically notify the authors’ institutional or local ethics council and may also impose a ban on further submissions from the author group.