Publishing ethics

This journal publishes in accordance with Cambridge University Press’s research publishing ethics guidelines, which apply to authors, peer reviewers, the editorial office and the journal as a whole. Further details as applicable to this journal can be found below. Anyone who believes that these guidelines have not been followed should raise their concern with the editor or email publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Research Ethics

Research submitted to IO should adhere to ethical principles, including those related to the treatment of human participants (for instance, see the American Political Science Association’s 2020 Principles and Guidance for Human Subjects Research). We require corresponding authors to answer questions about research ethics when submitting manuscripts and to provide reasonable justification for deviations from core ethical principles.

Affiliations

Any article affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated. Knowingly providing false or fraudulent affiliation information is a form of misconduct, and may lead to article retraction.

Authorship

All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. In the event of a dispute or change request, at any stage of the publishing process, this journal will be guided by the relevant COPE flowchart in deciding the appropriate action(s).

The following are qualifying criteria for authorship*

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.

*These criteria are based on the ICMJE guidelines on authorship. Although they were developed for medical journals, they provide a useful framework on which to base decisions on authorship which can be applied to non-medical fields.

The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with co-authors.

The corresponding author's specific responsibilities include:

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.
Arranging for payment of an APC (article processing charge) where one is required. The affiliation of the corresponding author is used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived APCs (Author Processing Charge) under read and publish agreements.
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.

Authorship statements should be transparent about who contributed to the work and in what capacity.

This journal's author instructions contain further information on submitting your author list with your manuscript.

Author name change policy

An author who has changed their name may request an author name change on articles published in this journal. This can be done silently or through an Addendum according to author preference. We do not require evidence of name changes, but changes to both surname and first name may be subject to additional checks. Authors should contact name.change@cambridge.org to request more information or a name change.

Plagiarism

This journal adheres to Cambridge University’s definition of plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as ‘using someone else’s ideas, words, data, or other material produced by them without acknowledgement.’ Plagiarism can occur in respect to all types of sources and media, including:

text, illustrations, musical quotations, extended mathematical derivations, computer code, etc.
material downloaded from websites or drawn from manuscripts or other media
published and unpublished material, including lectures, presentations, and grey literature

We do not tolerate plagiarism in any of our publications, and we reserve the right to check all submissions through appropriate plagiarism checking tools. Submissions containing suspected plagiarism, in whole or part, will be rejected. If plagiarism is discovered post-publication, we will follow our guidance outlined in the Retractions, Corrections and Expressions of Concern section of these guidelines. We expect our readers, reviewers, and editors to raise any suspicions of plagiarism, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Duplicate and redundant publication

Duplicate or redundant publication occurs when a work, or substantial parts of a work, is published more than once by the author(s) of the work without appropriate cross-referencing or justification for the overlap. This can be in the same or a different language. We do not support substantial overlap between publications, unless:

it is felt that editorially this will strengthen the academic discourse; and
we have clear approval from the original publication; and
we include citation of the original source.

We expect our readers, reviewers and editors to raise any suspicions of duplicate or redundant publication, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing publishingethics@cambridge.org.

When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.

Text recycling

Text recycling, also known as self-plagiarism, is when an author re-uses sections of text from their own previous publications without proper attribution. This is distinct from redundant or duplicate publication which refers to larger scale repeated publication of text or data with at least one author in common. This journal will follow COPE guidelines on text recycling when assessing acceptability of text recycling in a given manuscript. These factors that will be considered are:

How much text is recycled
Where in the article the text recycling occurs
Whether the source of the recycled text has been acknowledged
Whether the article is a research or non-research article
Whether there is a breach of copyright
In some circumstances, cultural norms at the time and place of publication.

Where text recycling is deemed unacceptable, a submitted manuscript may be rejected. A published article may require a post-publication change as described in the Retractions, Corrections and Expressions of Concern below.

Any manuscript based on a thesis should be a reworking of the material in the thesis and written to conform to this journal's style guide. When quoting from the thesis or reusing figures, authors should avoid self-plagiarism by citing and referencing any extracts copied or adapted from the thesis appropriately. If a thesis was published by a publisher and is publicly accessible, permission may be required from the thesis publisher before submitting to a journal. The relevant editor should be informed that the manuscript draws on a thesis in the cover letter.

Questionable research practices and research misconduct

Image Manipulation

Where research data are collected or presented as images, modifying these images can sometimes misrepresent the results obtained or their significance. We recognise that there can be legitimate reasons for modifying images, but we expect authors to avoid modifying images where this leads to the falsification, fabrication, or misrepresentation of their results. Any allegation or finding of image manipulation will be investigated and acted on in accordance with COPE guidance, and may lead to a correction, retraction, or other notice being applied to the article.

Fraudulent Research and Research Misconduct

Where an allegation of research misconduct is made to the journal by an author, reader or peer reviewer, the journal’s first concern is the integrity of content it has published. The editor will work in line with COPE guidance, with Cambridge University Press and appropriate institutions or organisations, to investigate the allegation. Any publication found to include fraudulent or unethical research or research which violates the journal’s policies may be retracted or have an appropriate correction or expression of concern issued. Please see the Retractions, Corrections and Expressions of Concern section of these guidelines for more information.

Occasionally, as part of an investigation into an allegation of data or image manipulation, the editor may ask to see the raw data related to the data or images presented in the authors’ manuscript or publication. In order to support or carry out a misconduct investigation, this journal may also be required to share information about a submission or publication, including peer reviews, with third parties. This journal reserves the right to alert and/or involve an author’s employer, funder, or other responsible body in the event of a misconduct investigation, and to share information such as may be necessary to support an investigation.

Corrections, Retractions and Expressions of Concern

Corrections

Minor changes such as those which would likely occur during copyediting, typesetting or proofreading may be made on accepted manuscripts, but will not normally be made to First View or Versions of Record unless they impact the interpretation of the article.

If an author is found to have made an error in a published article, a Corrigendum will be used. If the journal is found to have made an error, an Erratum will be used.

Retractions

This journal will consider retractions in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines*.

Retractions are usually reserved for articles that are so seriously flawed that their findings or conclusions should not be relied upon, or that contain substantial plagiarism or life-endangering content or report unethical research.

*Note that the list of reasons to retract in COPE’s guidelines is not exclusive. The editor may retract a publication for any reason that irreversibly undermines the article’s validity or integrity.

Expressions of concern

Occasionally, where the reliability or integrity of a publication is of concern, but where an investigation will take an unusually long time, or where an investigation is not possible, the editor may choose to publish an Expression of Concern on the article to alert readers to interpret the article content with caution.

Permanence of the published record

Cambridge University Press maintains a record of the existence of everything its journals publish with information (metadata) describing each publication. Where we are obliged to alter the publication record in any way, such as in the case of research misconduct leading to retraction of a publication, we preserve the academic record as far possible. In exceptional cases an article may be removed from online publication where it is deemed necessary to comply with legal obligations. This includes, without limitation, where there are concerns that the article is defamatory, violates personal privacy or confidentiality laws, is the subject of a court order, or might pose a serious health risk to the general public. In these circumstances, the article may be removed, and a notice published that clearly states why the full article has been removed.

Peer review

This journal usually requires a minimum of two independent peer reviewers to peer review manuscripts for consideration in the journal.

This journal uses a double-anonymous peer review model. This means that the identities of both the peer reviewers and the authors are kept hidden. Please check the journal's peer review information for full details of this process and any policy exceptions.

Supporting evidence

Cambridge University Press aims to provide authors with the ability to connect supporting evidence with their manuscripts, either on our own platform or through third party services.

Please see this journal's research transparency policy for details of any requirements regarding the sharing of supporting evidence.

This journal permits authors to submit and publish supplementary materials that are not essential for inclusion or that cannot be accommodated in the main text, but that would be of benefit to the reader. It should be assumed that supplementary materials will not be peer-reviewed.

Conflicts of Interest

Should any author submitting a paper to IO believe they or their co-authors have a conflict of interest (COI) with any editor that they, the author, fear may compromise the objectivity of the review process, the author has the right to disclose this conflict and to request that the submission be handled under the alternative review process. The procedures for this process are laid out in the Policy on Conflicts of Interest for IO Editorial Team.

A mechanism for reporting a potential COI is built into the Editorial Manager submission process; only the IO managing editor will have access to this information; they will forward it to the IO Ethics Committee. Under rules of strict confidentiality, the Ethics Committee may request additional information about the potential COI from any editor or from the submitting author. The corresponding author may request that the editor not be informed about the alternative review process request. After reviewing the information provided, the Ethics Committee will determine whether a COI exists and recommend appropriate action to the IO Executive Committee.

IO Ethics Committee: Professor Judith Kelley (Chair), Professor Joshua Kertzer, Professor Edward Mansfield. Contact the committee at coi@iojournal.org.

Anyone who suspects an undisclosed competing interest regarding a work published or under consideration in this journal should inform the relevant editor or email publishingethics@cambridge.org.

Funding statement

This journal requires authors to include a statement of funding in their manuscript. The source of funding for the authors’ research should be stated in accordance with the journal's author instructions.

Libel, defamation and freedom of expression

Freedom of expression is critical to us as academic publishers, but we do not support publishing false statements that harm the reputation of individuals, groups, or organisations. Authors should contact the editor if they have concerns about potentially libellous content in their own manuscripts or any publications.

Appeals

Appeals of editorial decisions will only be considered if they refer to a specific manuscript and must be based on evidence that either (1) an editor or reviewer made a significant factual error/a major misunderstanding of a manuscript, or (2) the integrity of the editorial decision making process was compromised. In general, only one appeal per manuscript per decision stage will be considered. For further information on how to appeal, please refer to this journal's peer review information.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools

We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.

In particular, any use of an AI tool:

to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s).
to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript.
must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission.

Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.

Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process. It is important that that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see Funding statement on the Preparing your Materials page).

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:

“The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
“The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)].

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