Ethical Practices

Ethical Practices

Originally Ratified, 22nd November 2022

Article I - Third-Party Ethical Oversight

  • The Ethical Oversight Committee 
    1. The Ethical Oversight Committee (EOC) is the body which oversees the ethical practices of the Macalester Street Journal (MSJ). The EOC will be made up of at least three faculty or staff members of Macalester College with each section’s respective department represented by at least one member. 
    2. EOC members will have additionally been asked and agreed to serve as formal or informal advisors to the Macalester Street Journal. 
      1. Formal advisors will be selected by the ERB Leadership Standing Committee, composed of the General Director(s), Chief Politics Editor, Chief Economics Editor, and Chief Geography Editor. Upon selection, the formal advisor nominee will be confirmed by a vote of the MSJ Editorial Review Board (ERB).
  • EOC Responsibilities 
    1. The EOC is responsible for investigating all ethical complaints against the MSJ Editorial Review Board. This includes an annual review of the journal’s ethical standing and recommendation(s) for the ERB on how to improve fair and sustainable operations. A report on the ethical standing of MSJ will be presented to the ERB, who will be tasked with making institutional revisions if unethical practices have been uncovered.
    2. The EOC will also be first to handle or delegate a response in any instance where the journal’s adherence to any of the following criteria are under question:
      1. The policies outlined in any of its governing documentation, 
      2. Any undocumented ethical prescriptions set forth by the EOC themselves.
    3. A simple and anonymous method for communication and reporting to the EOC must be made available and clear on the MSJ website.

 

Article II - Handling Publication Misconduct

https://publicationethics.org/misconduct

The Macalester Street Journal will not tolerate the following examples of publication misconduct and will reflect this goal in the publication process. The following examples, outlined by the New Delhi Publishers (https://www.ndpublisher.in/publicationconduct.php), were deemed by the Editorial Review Board as apt examples of misconduct.

Due to the authors of this journal maintaining the ability to submit their work in other capacities besides MSJ, New Delhi Publishers Misconduct standard number 5 is not included in the MSJ examples of misconduct.

  1. Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's thoughts, ideas, data, figures, research methods, or words without giving appropriate credit, or the over-citation of another person's published work. 
  2. Fabrication: Fabrication is the practice of making up data or results without having performed relevant research.
  3. Falsification: Falsification is the practice of changing data or results intentionally such that a misleading conclusion is drawn.
  4. Inappropriate authorship: Authorship is not appropriately assigned based on the author's contributions. This includes the granting of authorship to a non-participating party or not recognizing authorship of a party that fits the requirements of authorship as described by the Office of the Provost at Yale University (https://provost.yale.edu/policies/academic-integrity/guidance-authorship-scholarly-or-scientific-publications).
  5. Overlapping publication: Overlapping publication refers to the practice of publishing a paper overlaps substantially with one already published.
  6. Salami publication: Salami publication refers to the practice of slicing data from a large study, which could have been reported in a single paper, into different pieces and publishing them in two or more articles, all of which cover the same population, methods, and questions.

In the case of plagiarism, misconduct will be identified through the use of an online plagiarism detector through an online resource called Turnitin.com which was deemed the most correct and ethical choice of service. MSJ will use a free but limited version of Turnitin available through a website called Scribbr.com located at the link: https://www.scribbr.com/plagiarism-checker/. Though the full version is not free, measures will be taken to obtain it in the future. All plagiarism detection services used in the future will be approved by a simple majority of the ERB.

Action: With the exception of example 4, which is described in the next section, if submissions are found to contain any of the above examples of Publication Misconduct, the journal will enact the following:

  • Reject the submission or withdraw the published paper.
  • Not accept the applicable author(s) submissions to MSJ in the future.

Allegations: In the case that allegations of Misconduct are submitted to the Ethical Oversight Committee, the EOC will act in the following way to address the allegations in a fair and consistent manner:

  • The EOC designated as having ethical oversight will conduct an investigation of the examples of Publication Misconduct outlined in this document within the scope of the allegation.
  • Following the completion of the investigation, the EOC will finalize a report for the ERB about their decision of whether the allegation addressed examples of misconduct.
  • The actions taken to any submission that contains misconduct will be enacted.

 

Article III - Policies on Authorship

https://publicationethics.org/authorship

MSJ requires and is committed to maintaining factual authorship and contributorship information for its issues and papers. If allegations are made they are treated in the same manner as described in the misconduct section; this section only outlines the actions of the ERB to prevent dishonest authorship/contributorship and the steps that would be taken to solve applicable disputes. This commitment includes the following definitions of deserved authorship and contributorship:

  • As referenced in the Misconduct section, MSJ follows the definition of authorship set by Yale University’s Office of the Provost (https://provost.yale.edu/policies/academic-integrity/guidance-authorship-scholarly-or-scientific-publications): “Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for its content. All co-authors should have been directly involved in all three of the following:
    • planning and contribution to some component (conception, design, conduct, analysis, or interpretation) of the work which led to the paper or interpreting at least a portion of the results;
    • writing a draft of the article or revising it for intellectual content; and
    • final approval of the version to be published.  All authors should review and approve the manuscript before it is submitted for publication, at least as it pertains to their roles in the project.”
  • Those parties who contributed to the completion of the paper/submission in less than three of the involvements of authorship outlined above, but at least one, should be given a sufficient contributorship title for their work.

Action: If authorship is deemed as an insufficient or nonfactual classification by the ERB, the following actions will be enacted:

  • Reject the submission or withdraw the published paper.
  • Accept the paper, but reevaluate the submission pending a designated period where the submitter may edit the paper to honestly reflect authorship and contributorship.

Disputes: In the case that a dispute over authorship occurs, either by the discovery of the ERB, report by a disputing party, or report by an unaffiliated party, the ERB will act in the following way to address the dispute in a fair and consistent manner:

  • The EOC designated as having ethical oversight will meet with the disputing parties and discuss the nature of the disagreement. If the decision of the committee is such that the submission should continue in whatever respective stage of the process, a determination will be set for a distribution of credit consistent with the definitions of authorship and contributorship used by MSJ. 
  • The author(s) will be informed of the decision and will be offered the option to either continue in whatever respective stage of the submission process or withdraw the paper.
  • If an agreement on these credits is not reached by all parties, the EOC may conduct a further investigation to determine the correct distribution of credit on the appeal of any parties or the EOC may choose at their discretion to hold their original determination through an appeal without further investigation.

 

Article IV - Complaints and Appeals

https://publicationethics.org/appeals

MSJ is dedicated to keeping its publishing system and governing body as fair and transparent as possible. Thus, beyond publishing the Journal Guidelines and Ethical Practices, MSJ maintains the following process for complaints and appeals:

  • For appeals to the ERB pertaining to the reconsideration of submitted work, the ERB works with the appellant to determine a presentation debate whereby the appellant may present their case for acceptance. The ERB will then vote on acceptance again with a decision coming from a simple majority.
  • For complaints against the journal officials, editors, or the journal in general, all applicable complaint information will be forwarded to the EOC designated as having ethical oversight.
    • The EOC will conduct an investigation into the nature of the complaints.
    • If the investigation results in a determination of unethical action by the editors, officers, or the journal itself, the EOC will decide an appropriate way to address the issue and order its implementation.

 

Article V - Conflicts of Interest

https://publicationethics.org/competinginterests

Staff and writers at MSJ are prohibited from allowing their conflicting interests to interfere with the integrity, ethical standing, or purpose of the Macalester Street Journal. With an open peer-review system and the Declarations of Interests by all members of applicable journal staff, MSJ strives to eliminate corruption and competing interests from its work. The open peer-review system means that submitters are aware of the identity of their reviewers and vice-versa. The Declarations of Interests are documents published publicly on the journal website and include a staff or board member’s organizational affiliations, political affiliations (possibly N/A), current paid occupations, and major conflicting interests (possibly N/A). This transparency will hold all parties to an ethical standard. Furthermore, as referenced in the previous section, complaints may be made to prevent conflicts of interest.

 

Article VI - Intellectual Property

https://publicationethics.org/intellectualproperty

Within this journal, authors always maintain rights over their work but grant MSJ the right to hold and possibly publish work submitted in tandem with different work by other authors. Furthermore, to protect the integrity of this rule, all work is automatically licensed to its author(s) when the issue is published using a Creative Commons (CC) Attribution 4.0 License. Similarly, MSJ does not limit authors in only publishing or submitting work to MSJ, thus pre-publication or post-publication is allowed. All intellectual property violations or disagreements are outlined and handled in the second section titled, Handling Publication Misconduct, or the third section titled, Policies on Authorship.

 

Article VII - Ethical Journal Management

https://publicationethics.org/management

In addition to the outline of responsibilities and roles of Journal Management described in the Journal Guidelines and Overview of Roles. All journal editors and management officials must learn the journal software utilized by MSJ: OJS Systems. This can be taught by an experienced official/editor or be learned online but is mandatory all the same. Furthermore, all editors and officials must undergo leadership training that consists of the following:

  • Reading and understanding the MSJ Journal Guidelines and Ethical Practices,
  • Engaging in a group discussion about journal management strategies and fair governance,
  • Watching the Corps Leadership LLC video titled, “Developing Effective Ethical Leaders” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQEIWXUDfhw).

 

Article VIII - Post-Publication Discussion and Correction

https://publicationethics.org/postpublication

MSJ allows and encourages discussion about its published issues and articles. Discussion can be done on third-party websites/forums or by directly emailing the journal. If any comments point to unethical practices or journal guideline violations, the steps outlined within this document will be enacted in order to address the issue or allegation. If the comment pertains to a lack of quality work within the issue or article and the commenter wishes for a re-review, they will be contacted and informed that the Editorial Review Board will vote on a re-review of the work.

 

Special thanks to General Director Sean Maxfield, Class of 2026, and Chief Politics Editor Luke Evans, Class of 2026, for initially preparing this living document.