Ethical guidelines for the publication of submissions to the Stockholm IP Law Review

Authorship and contributorship

The Stockholm Intellectual Property Law Review (SIPLR) editorial board follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (CОРЕ) principles and recommendations in aspects of authorship and contributorship.

The SIPLR has the ambition to be a publication platform for research from different disciplines in the field of intellectual property rights. We acknowledge thus that different disciplines might have different norms of who is listed as an author. In case of co-authorship, we expect all authors to be in agreement that the authors listed would be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be listed are excluded. We also expect all listed authors to take responsibility for the integrity of the work. In the event of a dispute or change request (including author order or designation) at any stage of the publishing process, we will be guided by the relevant COPE flowchart, guidance, or case precedents in deciding the appropriate action(s). If these changes raise concerns about the broader integrity of the work further investigation may follow leading to the decision to not publish the article or retract publication.

The principles according to which authorship is to be determined:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and/or

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and/or

Final approval of the version to be published; and

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Corresponding authors

In case of co-authorship the SIPLR editorial board will require information on who will constitute the corresponding author:

The corresponding author has the following responsibilities:

Manuscript correction and proofreading. Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts;

Agreeing to and signing the Author Publishing Agreement on behalf of relevant co-authors and/or arranging for any third-party copyright owners’ signature;

Acting on behalf of all co-authors in responding to queries from all sources post-publication, including questions relating to publishing ethics, reuse of content, or the availability of data, materials, resources etc.

Requests to change the corresponding author after submission will be subject to scrutiny and a formal process, as with any authorship change. This applies to both pre- and post-publication of the article.

Contributorship

Contribution that constitutes ‘authorship’ will include the following four elements:

“Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND

Final approval of the version to be published; AND

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. We encourage authors to list anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship in an Acknowledgments section in their publication with permission, for example to recognise the contributions of anyone who provided research or writing assistance.

Disputes related to Authorship

The SIPLR Editorial Board will apply COPE guidelines on matters of authorship and authorship disputes, and our editorial board will proceed in the processing of such disputes as well as in the decisions taken on the basis of COPE flowcharts, guidelines and cases discussed on the COPE webpage.

The SIPLR Editorial Board develops trusting relationships with authors based on their acceptance of the publication ethics standards, Publishing and Editorial policy, and Instructions for authors. Moreover, the author must demonstrate only own unique ideas and research results in his/her article, does not submit the paper to several journals at once, does not borrow other authors’ ideas while preparing the research, and does not use reviewers for improving the quality of the article to submit it to another journal.

Conflict of interest

We follow the guidelines on Good Publication Practice as reported in COPE.

At the time of submission, SIPLR policy requires that authors reveal any conflict of interest, including financial interests or connections, direct or indirect, or any other situations that could raise questions of bias in the submission as a whole and any conclusions, implications, or opinions in the submission.

Disclosed potential conflicts of interest should include any relevant commercial or other source of funding for authors and any sponsoring or associated institutions, departments, or organizations.

Author’s considering whether they should declare a conflict of interest should consider the following question: Is there anything that you have not disclosed that might cause doubt in the authenticity or impartialness of your submission if it became public knowledge after the publication?

As an integral part of the submission process, authors are required to provide confirmation that they either (1) have no conflicts of interest; (2) have conflicts of interest and provide details of such conflicts of interest; or (3) are unsure if they have conflicts of interest and provide details of such potential conflicts of interest. Such confirmation is required by or on behalf of all authors before reviewing begins.

Conflicts of Interest can be addressed and may need to be addressed also in a statement within the submission and ultimately the published work itself.

If after publication of a submission, a new conflict of interest arises or becomes known, we review the conflict of interest and determine the necessary course of action. The potential actions that will be taken will depend on the type of conflict and what we find in our review and include (1) retraction of a publication; (2) correction or amendment of the publication; (3) amendment to disclose conflicts; or (3) no action.

Any conflicts of interest editors may have at the time of joining SIPLR or at the time of reviewing a specific submission are also investigated and considered by SIPLR. If a conflict of interest is found at the time of joining, it will be considered if the editor can join and if measures can be put in place to mitigate the conflict of interest and if they cannot, such editor will not be allowed to join. If an editor has a conflict of interest with a specific submission, such editor will refrain from reviewing and working on the substance of such submission.

Peer review process

All editions of the SIPLR  are peer reviewed and must follow the general guidelines for ethical editing stipulated by COPE.

All manuscripts submitted  are initially assessed by an editor, who decides whether or not the article fits the scope of the journal and is suitable for peer review. Manuscripts are then sent to at least two peer-reviewers. The journal uses a double-blind peer-review process. It is however possible for the peer-reviewer to choose to disclose their name if they wish.

The SIPLR ensures that journal teams receive editorial support, ethical guidance and undertake professional networking to follow best practice and to guarantee a high quality output.

Selection of reviewers

Reviewers are selected on the basis of proposals from the Scientific Board. Reviewers are senior researchers with a competence in the research field of the publication.

Number of peer reviewers per manuscript

The SIPLR has a minimum of two reviewers per article. Articles are inspected anonymously in order to maintain maximum impartiality.

Timeliness

Reviewers shall only accept articles that they are confident that they can dedicate appropriate time in reviewing. Thus, reviewers shall review and return manuscripts in a timely manner.

Conflicts of interest

Reviewers are expected to report conflict of interest that they are aware of when they receive the manuscript.

Conducting a review

Reviewers shall review the submitted articles and propose appropriate amendments.

Reviews should be honest and objective. Reviewers should not be influenced by:

The origin of the manuscript.

Religious, political or cultural viewpoint of the author.

Gender, race, ethnicity or citizenry of the author.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

Reviewers shall provide unbiased and constructive written comments on the merits and scientific value of the work, as well as the documented basis for the reviewer’s opinion.

Manuscripts are confidential materials given to a reviewer in trust for the sole purpose of critical evaluation. Reviewers shall preserve the confidentiality of the review process: do not divulge, discuss with third parties, or share information about the document being reviewed. Details of the manuscript and the review process should remain confidential during and after the review process.

Reviewers shall ensure that the article cites all relevant work done by other scholars so that only accurate and verified information is published.

Reviewers shall ensure that the methods and analysis are detailed enough and well implemented to allow the reader to judge the scientific merit of the study design and be able to reproduce it.

Recommendations

All articles published in the SIPLR go through the peer review process and receive at least two reviews. The decision will be one of the following:

Accept

Accept after minor revisions

Reconsider after major revisions

Reject and encourage resubmission

Recommendations should be justified by constructive arguments and facts based on the content of the manuscript.

Allegations of misconduct

SIPLR takes all allegations of misconduct seriously (both pre-publication and post publication). Allegations of misconduct can be review, publication and research misconduct. Reports of alleged misconduct are submitted to the Editor in chief. All allegations are investigated by the Editorial Board. Anyone subject to an allegation of misconduct will not be involved in the investigation process. However, the person alleged of misconduct is given an opportunity to provide a statement and supportive information about the circumstances. In situations where the allegation is investigated to be true, the related publication is prevented or in cases where the article has been already published the article will be deleted from the online journal and from the further issues.

Complaints and appeals

SIPLR ensures to have measures in place to handle complaints against the Journal, its staff, editorial board or the publisher.

We will abide by the following principles when investigating complaints and appeals:

Fairness: we will treat all parties involved in a fair way and will avoid potential conflicts of interest.

Confidentiality: we won’t disclose information that is not of extreme importance for the resolution of the complaint.

Clarity: we will make all efforts to make all our communication clear.

Speed: we will ensure to resolve complaints as rapidly as possible while still allowing reasonable time for the parties to respond.

Authors’ Appeal

Authors can appeal a rejection by sending an email to the journal’s editorial office. The appeal must provide a detailed rationale, including point-by-point responses to the reviewers’ comments.

Post-publication discussions

Retraction – Amendments and Corrections

If only a small part of an article reports flawed data or content, this may be best rectified by a correction. Similarly, if only a small section of an article (eg, a few sentences in the discussion) is plagiarised, the SIPLR Editorial Board will require a correction (which could note that text was used without appropriate acknowledgement and cite the source) rather than the retraction of the entire article.

Retraction; what form should it take?

In case of retraction, a retraction notice on the specific article will be published. This will mention the reasons and basis for the retraction to enable readers of SIPLR to understand why the article is unreliable and will also specify who is retracting the article (on whose request) and also how the matter came to the SIPLR’s attention (claimants may be named only when they have given permission).

Whenever possible, SIPLR editors will negotiate with authors and attempt to agree on a form of wording that is clear and informative to readers and acceptable to all parties. However, prolonged negotiations should not unreasonably delay retraction and editors should publish retractions even if consensus cannot be reached. Retraction notices will be published in all versions of the journal (ie, print and/or online) and will include the authors and title of the retracted article in the retraction heading.

The retraction will appear on all online searches for the retracted publication. In extremely limited cases SIPLR editors may decide to remove an article from online publication, such as when the article is clearly defamatory, violates personal privacy, is the subject of a court order.

The responsibility with retracting articles lies with the SIPLR Editorial Board.

Publications will be retracted as soon as possible after the SIPLR Editorial Board is convinced that the publication is seriously flawed, misleading, or falls into any of the categories described above. We will proceed with prompt retraction in order to minimise the number of researchers who cite the erroneous work, act on its findings, or draw incorrect conclusions, such as from ‘double counting’ redundant publications in meta-analyses or similar instances. However, if an allegation of misconduct is related to a potential retraction results in a disciplinary hearing or institutional investigation, it may be appropriate to wait for the outcome before issuing a retraction (but an expression of concern may be published in the interim).

When the SIPLR Editorial Board has credible grounds to suspect misconduct, this will be brought to the attention of the authors’ institutions as early as possible, but the decision to correct or retract an article will be made by the Editorial Board and does not necessarily depend on an institutional finding of misconduct. SIPLR Editorial Board will use the COPE Guidelines, Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity cases (https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2018.1.3) and the CLUE Guidelines, Cooperation and liaison between universities and editors (CLUE): Recommendations on best practice, (https://doi.org/10.1101/139170) ).

If necessary, a previously corrected article may be further corrected or a previously corrected article may be retracted following the outcome of an institutional investigation. When possible, the outcome of institutional investigations should be quoted from and cited in the notice, and any findings of misconduct should be appropriately attributed to the institution who made the finding.

Can authors dissociate themselves from a retracted publication?

If retraction is due to the actions of some, but not all, authors of a publication, the notice of retraction should mention this when possible. However, authorship entails some degree of joint responsibility for the integrity of the reported research so it is not appropriate for authors names to be removed from a publication even if they were not directly culpable for the errors or actions that led to retraction

Ethical oversight

Regarding Ethical oversight, we rely on the СОРE definition, namely :  “Ethical oversight should include, but not be limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, treatment of confidential data, and business/marketing practices.” Based on this definition, the editorial staff of the journals work in accordance with ethical principles.

The SIPLR’s policy regarding the monitoring of how ethical principles are observed is based on the mutual trust of the participants in the publication process and the expectation of mandatory observance of all ethical principles of the publication.

For ethical considerations that are not provided in this text, the SIPLR follows the COPE guidelines in https://publicationethics.org/.