Editorial Responsibilities

1) Purpose and scope

  • Integrity of the record: Editors are custodians of accuracy, transparency, and timely corrections.
  • Independence: Decisions are based on scholarly merit and clinical value; financial considerations (including APC/waiver status) are separated from editorial judgment.
  • Equity and inclusion: Editors foster diverse voices and respect for communities affected by research.
  • Duty of care: Patient privacy, participant welfare, and public health considerations are paramount.

2) Core editorial duties

Fairness and timeliness

  • Apply standards consistently across authors, topics, and methods.
  • Communicate timelines and delays; avoid unnecessary rounds of review.
  • Use constructive, respectful language in decisions and queries.

Transparency and documentation

  • Record decisions, conflicts, and reviewer identities (confidentially) in the manuscript audit trail.
  • Explain major decisions, especially when reviews conflict or when declining without external review.
  • Flag ethics or integrity concerns clearly and factually.

These responsibilities complement and do not replace the detailed operational steps in Editor’s Guidelines and the ethical frameworks in Ethics for Editors.

3) Duty of care to patients, participants, and communities

  • Ensure manuscripts with identifiable patient information include explicit, documented consent for publication.
  • Evaluate risk of harm in studies involving vulnerable groups; require clear safeguards and ethical oversight.
  • In public-interest scenarios (e.g., safety alerts), consider fast-track review while preserving rigor.
  • For qualitative work, require culturally respectful methods, consent processes, and protections against re-identification.

Rapid, responsible communication

When community safety or clinical practice may be immediately affected, editors may accelerate review and production. Any fast-tracking must be documented and must not bypass ethical or methodological safeguards.

4) Conflicts of interest and editorial independence

  • Disclose personal, financial, institutional, or intellectual conflicts that could reasonably be perceived to bias judgment.
  • Recuse promptly from conflicted manuscripts and transfer to an unconflicted editor before reviewer selection.
  • Do not handle manuscripts from your current trainees, supervisors, close collaborators, or same department without EiC approval and transparent recusal.
  • Do not consider authors’ ability to pay or waiver status in any editorial decision.

Editors update conflict-of-interest declarations annually and upon role changes; declarations are stored in the journal’s records.

5) Confidentiality and data protection

  • Maintain strict confidentiality for manuscripts, reviews, and identities of reviewers (and authors if blinded).
  • Share manuscript content only with individuals directly involved in the editorial process.
  • Do not upload confidential material to external tools that store or reuse content; use privacy-preserving tools where permitted.
  • Redact patient identifiers in any editor-shared excerpts and confirm consent for identifiable images/audio.

Common pitfalls

Forwarding manuscripts via personal email; using cloud tools with default public links; copying reviewer comments into unprotected documents; discussing submissions on social media.

6) Stewardship of peer review

Reviewer selection

  • Match clinical and methodological expertise; include practice perspectives where relevant.
  • Promote diversity in geography, institution type, and career stage; avoid conflicts of interest.
  • Limit burdens by avoiding the same reviewers repeatedly; rotate and mentor new reviewers when appropriate.

Quality of reports

  • Encourage constructive, respectful feedback focused on methods, analysis, and clinical relevance.
  • Discourage citation coercion and unnecessary experiments that do not affect conclusions.
  • Sanitize comments that reveal reviewer identity or include inappropriate tone.

Editors ensure that the review model (e.g., blinded) is respected and explain deviations when necessary (e.g., specialized statistical consults).

7) Decision standards and author communication

Decision Editorial responsibilities Communication essentials
Accept Confirm ethical/administrative completeness; minor edits only. Clear next steps for proofs, licensing, and any post-acceptance items.
Minor revision Specify discrete edits; avoid scope creep. Bullet list with priorities; request clean and tracked versions plus response letter.
Major revision Outline substantive concerns (methods, analysis, interpretation). State re-review expectations and possible outcomes; provide constructive guidance.
Decline Ensure fair assessment; consult EiC if borderline. Provide specific reasons; suggest alternative venues or improvements where feasible.

Decision letters must be courteous, specific, and bias-aware. When reviews conflict, explain the editorial synthesis and which points were decisive.

8) Ethics and integrity oversight

  • Verify presence and adequacy of IRB/IEC approvals or waivers and informed consent statements.
  • Require trial or protocol registration for prospective studies where applicable.
  • Run similarity checks and image integrity reviews proportionately; request raw data or logs where concerns arise.
  • Coordinate with institutions/funders when investigating credible allegations of misconduct.

Escalation pathway (summary)

  1. Document concern and initial evidence in the audit trail.
  2. Seek explanation from the corresponding author with a clear timeline.
  3. Consult EiC; involve institution/funder if unresolved.
  4. Decide on proportionate outcome: correction, expression of concern, retraction/replacement.

9) Data, reproducibility, and transparency

  • Ensure the manuscript includes a Data Availability Statement consistent with privacy and consent.
  • Encourage deposit of de-identified datasets, instruments, and analytic code in reputable repositories with persistent identifiers.
  • For qualitative work, encourage sharing of instruments/codebooks and exemplar excerpts consistent with consent and community agreements.
  • Promote clear reporting of software versions, effect sizes, confidence intervals, and sensitivity analyses.

10) Inclusion, equity, and respectful practice

Diverse scholarship

  • Encourage submissions from different regions, practice settings, and career stages.
  • Value clinically meaningful studies even when sample sizes are constrained by context, provided methods are sound.

Respectful language

  • Prompt authors to use person-first, non-stigmatizing language and culturally respectful framing.
  • Address harmful or biased phrasing in review and decision letters.

Editors should be mindful of resource constraints faced by some teams and avoid unnecessary or excessive requests that do not change conclusions.

11) Accessibility

  • Require alt text prompts for figures and ensure color is not the sole encoding of information.
  • Encourage captions/transcripts for audio/video with speech or clinically relevant sounds.
  • Support plain-language summaries where feasible to reach bedside nurses, students, and patients.

12) Complaints and appeals

  • Acknowledge complaints promptly; investigate impartially; provide a written outcome and remedies where appropriate.
  • Appeals are considered by the EiC or a delegate not involved in the original decision and may involve an additional expert opinion.
  • Record all complaints, appeals, evidence reviewed, and outcomes in the manuscript audit trail.

13) Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and replacements

Proportionate actions

  • Correction: Honest errors that do not invalidate conclusions.
  • Expression of Concern: Serious unresolved issues pending investigation.
  • Retraction: Unreliable findings or major ethical breaches.
  • Replacement: Approved when a corrected version supersedes the original with transparent linkage.

Implementation

  • Publish visible notices in HTML/PDF; crosslink bi-directionally.
  • Notify indexes and DOI registration services to propagate status changes.
  • Preserve the scholarly record; use headers/watermarks for retracted PDFs.

14) Special content and invited material

  • Ensure invited pieces meet editorial quality and ethical standards; peer review externally where appropriate.
  • Define guest editor roles, conflicts management, and reviewer safeguards for thematic issues.
  • Document any deviations from standard workflow for transparency.

15) Use of AI and computational tools by editors

  • Do not input confidential manuscript content into tools that store or reuse data for training.
  • Privacy-preserving internal tools may support logistics (e.g., deadline tracking) but must not replace editorial judgment.
  • If computational screening tools (e.g., similarity, image forensics) are used, document the tool and threshold in the audit trail.

16) Record-keeping, audit trails, and data retention

  • Maintain a complete audit trail: editor assignments, conflicts declarations, reviewer identities (confidential), decision letters, timelines, and policy deviations.
  • Retain records according to journal policy and applicable law; protect personal data and patient privacy.
  • On platform migration, ensure secure transfer and preservation of audit logs.

17) Training, calibration, and continuous improvement

Capacity building

  • Participate in regular editor meetings for policy updates and case reviews.
  • Undertake training in statistics, qualitative methods, research integrity, and inclusive practices.
  • Share anonymized exemplars of strong decision letters and constructive reviews.

Calibration

  • Align thresholds for “minor” vs “major” revisions; harmonize expectations for data availability and reporting checklists.
  • Review metrics (below) to identify process bottlenecks and quality issues.

18) Quality indicators and metrics

Indicator What it reflects Editor responsibilities
Time-to-first-decision Efficiency of triage and reviewer assignment Initiate reviews quickly; communicate delays.
Re-review cycle count Clarity and sufficiency of guidance to authors Provide prioritized, actionable revision requests.
Correction/retraction rate Integrity outcomes and responsiveness Apply proportionate actions promptly; prevent repeat issues.
Reviewer diversity and responsiveness Inclusivity and process health Broaden the pool; manage follow-ups.
Author satisfaction signals Perceived fairness and clarity Use courteous, specific decision letters; invite feedback.

19) Professional boundaries and conduct

  • Maintain respectful, neutral tone in all correspondence; avoid favoritism or disparaging remarks.
  • Do not exploit access to unpublished work for personal or professional gain.
  • Refrain from social media commentary on active submissions or confidential editorial matters.

20) Governance and policy alignment

  • Editors comply with Editor’s Guidelines, Ethics for Editors, Confidentiality and Ethics for Editors, Publication Ethics Policy, and Ethical Standards for Authors.
  • Where policies intersect (e.g., data privacy), apply the stricter standard in favor of participant welfare and record integrity.
  • Policy updates are versioned; editors are responsible for reviewing changes and adjusting practice accordingly.

21) Contact and escalation

Editors may consult the Editor-in-Chief or the editorial office for conflict management, complex ethics, or potential corrections/retractions. Provide the manuscript ID, a concise summary of the issue, relevant documents (e.g., IRB approval), and proposed next steps for rapid guidance.