Implementing the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing

Article information

Sci Ed. 2019;6(1):1-2

Publication date (electronic) : 2019 February 20

doi : https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.148

Kihong Kim

Department of Physics, Ajou University, Suwon, Korea

Correspondence to Kihong Kim khkim@ajou.ac.kr

Received 2019 February 11; Accepted 2019 February 11.

The third edition of the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing was published in January, 2018. This edition, which consists of 16 principles related to all aspects of scholarly publishing such as journal governance, publication ethics, copyright, archiving and profit model, has been prepared by the collaboration of four organizations, which are the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) [1]. Most of these principles are self-evident and can be considered as essential ingredients in publishing scholarly journals in an ethically, academically and entrepreneurially transparent manner. Since July, 2018, Science Editing has fully adopted them in the editorial policy, which can be found in our web page about Best Practice (https://www.escienceediting.org/about/best_practice.php). This has been followed by many Korean journals since then.

The Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE) has also actively advocated these principles. A Korean translation of them was published in March, 2018 in the KCSE Newsletter. They were also included in the educational program of the KCSE. In the KCSE General Meeting and Conference held in January, 2019, Soon Kim presented the results of an extensive survey of the websites of all 793 journals published by non-profit academic societies and listed in the Science Citation Index Extended about whether the editorial policies of those journals were consistent with the 16 principles or not. She found that in surprisingly many categories including copyright, archiving and profit model information, the principles of transparency were poorly represented in the editorial policies of the majority of journals. This was especially the case for those in Asia, Africa and South America. Since it is not difficult to implement these principles, we strongly encourage many journals, especially those in Asia, to do so. This will enhance the transparency of those journals, thereby helping to develop them to better ones.