The Burney Journal Ethics and Malpractice Statement
The Burney Journal is committed to publishing original, high-quality research related to the Burney family, especially Frances Burney d’Arblay’s life, contemporaries, and times. We hold ourselves to rigorous ethical standards that are transparent, fair, and grounded in the core practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Responsibilities and Rights
Editor
The editor is primarily responsible for determining which submissions will be published in The Burney Journal. The editor ensures the quality of the journal material through a blind peer-review process, though the editor may notify an author within two weeks if his or her submission does not meet the journal’s quality standards. Decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication are based solely on the paper’s importance, originality, and clarity, as well as its relevance to the aims of the journal. All decisions are made on the basis of the manuscript’s merit; factors including the author’s race, gender, sexuality, religious or political beliefs, ethnicity, or citizenship are not considered. All online content for The Burney Journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. After publication, authors retain the copyright of their papers without restrictions and have the right to post pre-print or post-print versions of their article online, including on their personal, departmental, or institutional repository pages. The print version of The Burney Journal is included as part of membership in the Burney Society.
If a submission raises concerns about misconduct, the editor is ethically obliged to pursue alleged cases. Editors will first seek a response from those accused and then – if necessary – contact the appropriate investigative body. The editor will make all reasonable efforts to ensure that a proper investigation is conducted or obtain a solution to the problem. If a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distorted report has been published, the editor will correct it promptly and with due prominence in an editor’s note to the following issue. If, after an appropriate investigation, an essay is grounded in fraudulent research, it will be retracted.
Reviewers
The Burney Journal relies on a system of blind peer review to reach its publishing decisions and to help prospective authors improve their submissions. We aim to provide editorial decisions within 2-3 months; potential reviewers should withdraw from this process if they cannot provide an assessment within the editor’s assigned timeframe or if they feel unqualified to assess the submission. Reviewers will be objective in their assessments and support their comments with clear evidence. Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. A reviewer should also call to the editor’s attention any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.
Manuscripts for review are considered confidential documents. Authors’ and reviewers’ identities will be protected and withheld from all members of the review process excepting the editor. Information concerning the manuscripts should not be discussed with others without the approval of the editor. Editors and reviewers will not use unpublished information disclosed in a submitted manuscript for their own research purposes without the author’s explicit written consent. If a reviewer recognizes the author of a blind submission, he/she will recuse themselves from considering the manuscript. The editor will ask another member of the editorial board or external reader to assess the manuscript.
Authors
Prospective authors can find general guidance for submissions on The Burney Journal stylesheet. Any individual listed as an author of a paper should have significantly contributed to its research and/or writing. Contributions should be clearly written and original in their scope and conception. Authors must appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should be cited. Information obtained privately or in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the authors of those sources. Once an article is accepted, other members of the editorial production team (though not the reviewers) may be informed of authorial identity. The Burney Journal is a non-profit endeavor with an online open-access component that does not require fees from authors for submission and/or publication. Since The Burney Journal is an open-access journal, authors retain the copyright of their papers without restrictions, though they must grant The Burney Journal the right of first publication and other non-exclusive publishing rights.
Unless previously cleared with the editor, essays describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one location. Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is thus unacceptable. Manuscripts that have been published as copyrighted material elsewhere cannot be submitted. In addition, manuscripts under review by one journal should not be submitted to other publications while the manuscript is under review. All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Editors (as soon as possible) and readers should be informed about who has funded research and the role of the funders in the research.
It is the author’s obligation to inform the editor of any significant errors or inaccuracies in their published work, which may lead to a retraction or correction of the paper. If the editor learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the author’s responsibility to promptly retract or correct the paper or to provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.
Authors may appeal an editorial decision by contacting the editor within 30 days of receiving that decision: after further review by the editor, the manuscript may be sent to an alternate reader. Editors will not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission. Cogent criticisms of published work should be published unless the editor has convincing reasons why they cannot. Authors of criticized material have the opportunity to respond in a note to the editor or in The Burney Journal’s sister publication, The Burney Letter.