BJGP Open ethical guidelines
BJGP Open supports the ethical principles set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): see their reviewer and author guidelines. Research must conform to the Helsinki declaration, and you will normally have to confirm that the study has been approved by a named research ethics committee. In addition, you must ensure that there is no risk of you being charged with duplicate publication.
Competing interests
Authors must declare any competing interests by completing a standard form, which will be sent to all authors at the conclusion of the peer review process. This should be returned with the revised manuscript.
Writers of letters and editorials must also declare competing interests. Steps are also taken to ensure that reviewers declare competing interests or, if there is a conflict and they feel it is appropriate, to decline to review an article.
As a rough guide, competing interests have been described as interests which, if revealed later, would make a reasonable reader feel misled or deceived.
Competing interests can be personal or non-personal, financial or non-financial. Personal financial interests exist where the author or reviewer seeks to gain financially by expressing particular opinions; for example, reflecting the views of an industry sponsor. Non-personal financial interests are usually institutional interests where an organisation, such as a research group or university department stands to gain, for example by obtaining a research grant, by what has been written.
Personal, non-financial conflicts exist when, for example, a reviewer might make unjustifiably adverse comments about the work of someone in competition for a promotion or other appointment. Non-personal non-financial conflicts might be detected when an article, such as an editorial, seeks to discredit the work of other researchers working in the same field, or to promote that of the author(s). Reviewers and editors may, quite reasonably, ask authors to tone down or reconsider conclusions and recommendations emerging from the work which seem to be coloured by the source of funding.
Statements of competing interests are included in online versions of research articles.
Misconduct
BJGP Open takes allegations of misconduct seriously. In the first instance the Editor will contact the author(s) to request further details. If unresolved the case may be assessed by the BJGP Open Ethics Advisor who will follow the processes outlined in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowcharts.
Patient consent
All authors must declare that, where relevant, patient consent has been obtained and that all reasonable steps have been taken to maintain patient confidentiality. In the case where an individual does not have the legal, mental, or physical capacity to consent (for example, an underage child, a person with cognitive or intellectual disabilities, or a deceased person), permission can be granted by another person and they are required to state their relationship to that individual.
Duplicate publication
Medical editors have expressed concern about the practice of generating numbers of related articles from the same study (sometimes called ‘salami publication’).
This a matter of good publication practice rather than ethics. When considering whether to publish findings separately or together, authors should consider the degree of overlap according to the following questions:
- is this the same, related or a completely different question?
- is it using the same or different methods to answer the question?
- is it assessing the same, overlapping, or a completely different population of participants?
BJGP Open supports a general policy of encouraging more complete publishing: combining findings into single articles rather than separating them. Where authors are considering how to present findings, they should discuss with the Editor the extent to which submitting a more complete report will require the word limit to be extended.
To enable the Editor to make a judgement, authors should include with the submitted file, abstracts or full copies of other articles published, in press, submitted or planned, that have come from the same study.