Integrity provides the foundation for most scholarly endeavours, including research and publishing. Authors, reviewers, and editors share responsibility for creating and maintaining the system in which we conduct and publish our work. However, research and publishing are complicated processes. A single research effort may involve multiple authors, hundreds of participants, and a variety of skills and tools that play out over the course of months or even years. Ethical challenges may arise at any point along the way, so it is not surprising that both new and experienced scholars often struggle to understand and maintain the ethical standards expected of them. This article highlights some of the main challenges scholars face and provides initial guidance for seeking solutions. But most importantly, it sets the stage for this Special Editors' Forum on research and publishing ethics.

Journal editors serve a vital role because they are the gatekeepers of new scientific knowledge. Given the workload and time pressures associated with their role, editors face an important ethical dilemma: Should they allocate sufficient time to the editorial role or should they focus on their individual research performance, which is an important determinant of salary increases, promotions, and other financial rewards? We borrow from the macro-level corporate social responsibility literature to conceptualize editorial responsibility in terms of the triple bottom line of economic, social, and environmental performance. Our thesis is that there are recursive relationships among the economic, social, and environmental editorial performance dimensions such that editors who do good (i.e., social and environmental performance) also do well (i.e., economic performance). Thus, we bridge micro and macro domains by adapting a macro-level theory to the individual level of analysis and also bridge science and practice by discussing the impact of journal editors and scientific journals on a broad set of stakeholders including universities, research consumers, and society. We also offer suggestions to guide future research on whether the three editorial performance dimensions are part of a virtuous cycle that develops over time through mutually reinforcing feedback loops.

While editors and their editorial teams play an important role in gatekeeping the knowledge dissemination process, the majority of the responsibility to ensure the quality of the created knowledge and its fair review actually falls on the shoulder of the authors. This essay discusses the dilemmas faced by authors between maximizing their publication possibilities and being truthful to data, to co-authors, and to editors. Potential solutions are also discussed.

Researchers who are fortunate enough to collect large datasets sometimes wish to publish multiple papers using the same dataset. Unfortunately, there are few guidelines that authors can follow in managing these multiple papers. In this article, we address three main questions including: (i) how do authors know if they have a dataset truly worthy of multiple papers; (ii) what procedures do authors follow when they are ready to submit multiple papers from a single dataset to top tier journals; and (iii) what are the main issues when attempting to publish multiple papers from a single dataset? We provide a set of concrete recommendations for authors who wish to maximize their data collection efforts with multiple papers.

Management researchers are being encouraged to collect multilevel, multisource, and longitudinal (MML) data. In this essay, I identify the barriers that researchers might encounter in gaining university ethics committee approval for MML designs and the challenges researchers face when conducting MML research in organizations. I offer suggestions to overcome these challenges. I further discuss some long-term consequences of MML designs for researchers' relationships with organizations and the progress of the management field as a whole.

Managing a successful research team involves a variety of activities and potential issues. In this article, we discuss these issues based on our experience of having worked together for 20 years with regular team meetings that include Ph.D. and undergraduate students and occasionally other faculty colleagues. We attempt to describe the challenges that occur, including some ethical issues, and distil the knowledge we have gained over the years. We pose and answer nine questions about our team processes and procedures and end with a brief summary of key learning.

Presenting post hoc hypotheses based on empirical findings as if they had been developed a priori seems common in management papers. The pure form of this practice is likely to breach research ethics and impede theoretical development by suppressing the falsification process. Two other forms may be more tolerable: deletion of rejected hypotheses and refinement of hypotheses inspired by empirical findings. To address this problem, the field should provide stronger recognition of replication, descriptive research, rejected and post hoc hypotheses, and critical tests of competing hypotheses. These positive changes require the concerted effort of researchers, management associations, and journal editors and reviewers.

This essay discusses the sundry ethical considerations confronting editors and reviewers. To begin, journal hierarchy and manuscript lifecycles are reviewed. From there, ethical issues faced by individuals in various editorial roles, who interact with various parties, are discussed. Issues include making fair desk rejections, assigning reviewers ethically, refraining from the promotion of HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known), promoting a holistic view of validity, balancing scientific progress with journal success, providing developmental and actionable feedback, disclosing expertise parameters, and upholding the spirit of double-blind review.

Management scholars have suggested that our research is lacking in both relevance and meaning. In this article, I argue that a primary reason for this lack of relevance and meaning is the failure of our research to be responsive to all potential research stakeholders. Adopting the committed-to-participant research perspective, I offer suggestions for how both journal editors and organizational researchers can meaningfully include our research participants as valued stakeholders of the research process.

This commentary reflects on the Academy of Management's experience since developing a formal code of ethics to guide the professional behaviour of its members over twenty years ago. Despite widespread efforts to publicize the Code within the Academy, a sizeable proportion of Academy members are unaware it exists and only a very small proportion have read it carefully. Current efforts underway to increase ethics awareness are described. In addition, it is suggested that the discussion of ethical principles needs to move beyond a printed document and annual workshops to become more influential in the day-to-day lives of management professors. Suggestions for how this might be accomplished by the Academy of Management and other similar associations with codes of ethics (e.g., IACMR) are discussed.