Integrity
Best practice in the Essential Area of Integrity (Table 11) focused on having transparent policies for researchers with respect to data sharing and reporting guidelines, and on asking for this information on submission. Requiring researchers to share information on their funding sources and potential conflicts of interest, and providing these in the published article, also ensures that reviewers and readers form a complete assessment of the research presented. The quantitative analysis suggested that compliance with these recommendations is good. Most journals ask authors to declare funding (Q37: 46% R-score = 2; 43% R-score = 3) and conflicts of interest (Q40: 40% R-score = 2; 51% R-score = 3). Compliance on data policies is more mixed (Q22: 54% R-score = 2; 29% R-score = 1). Even excluding journals for which reporting guidelines are not applicable (14%), a significant number have no policy on using such guidelines to ensure minimum requirements for completeness.
Journals also need to direct reviewers to the sources of information they require to ensure that the research they are peer reviewing is completely and accurately reported. From the qualitative responses shared, suggestions for how to do this included providing specific questions on the reviewer report form that direct the reviewer to the methodology used, and links to relevant reporting guidelines where applicable. Compliance with these recommendations is low; 55% of journals do not explain to reviewers how their contribution will be used to make a decision (Q4:R-score = 1); 44% do not direct reviewers to assess the methodology (Q6: R-score = 1); and 46% do not refer reviewers to reporting guidelines, such as CONSORT (Q3: R-score = 1).
There is also a need to support reviewers by explaining how their contribution facilitates the editorial decision and how they can provide a constructive report, for example with appropriate information in the initial invitation email, reviewer report form and reviewer guidelines. Journals going the extra mile also provided guidance via editorials, newsletters and presentations. It was recognised that editors too need guidance on their approach to peer review, for example by using a variety of tools or approaches to ensure appropriate reviewers are invited to peer review and that confidentiality of the peer review process is maintained. It was recognised that editorial criteria for consistent decision making should be discussed regularly and that new editors could receive mentoring from more experienced editorial board members. 48% of journals had no formal criteria for editors to make consistent editorial decisions (Q23: R-score = 1).
If journals are committed to upholding the integrity of the research they publish, there needs to be a means by which readers can raise concerns. 58% of journals had some mechanism to achieve this (Q21: R-score = 2) and 28% had good practice on this (Q21: R-score = 3).
Some of the challenges apparent in these areas were a lack of coordinated approach, for example referring authors to reporting guidelines, but not peer reviewers (Moher, 2018). This was also apparent in requests for authors to provide funding sources or potential conflicts of interest, but not sharing the information in the published article. There was also a reluctance on the part of some journals to risk patronising reviewers about requirements for peer review, perhaps fearing resistance or accusations of ‘hand-holding,’ and an uncertainty about who is responsible for providing training, with opinions divided between the institution or publisher.