| Learning Objective #1: Describe eight ethical issues faced by editors of nursing journals | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Identify two methods for solving ethical dilemmas faced by nursing editors |
Design: A purposive, international convenience sample of nursing editors (n=88) answered questions about ethical issues and other difficult situations as a part of a comprehensive 108 question survey of nursing editors conducted via email in 2003-2004.
Results: Some type of ethical dilemma was reported by 64% of nursing editors in this sample. Content analysis produced 8 categories of ethical issues: (1) problems with society/association/publisher; (2) decisions about inflammatory submissions; (3) informed consent/IRB issues; (4) conflict of interest; (5) advertising pressures; (6) duplicate publication/plagiarism; (7) difficult interactions with authors ; and (8) authorship of articles. The most common ethical dilemma, expressed by 46% of the editors, was conflict about editorial control of journal content with owners of journals (publishers or associations). Editors were asked to publish an article for purposes other than scholarly ones (as a favor for an advertiser, a board member, or an organizational sponsor). Nursing editors experienced similar ethical issues to those reported for medical editors, as well as some not discussed in medical literature: rejecting well known authors, concern about legal issues for the journal when rejecting a manuscript, and conflicts between co-authors of manuscripts.
Conclusions: This description of ethical issues for nursing editors can assist authors to better understand some of the ethical issues in publishing, can help editors to view their ethical dilemmas in the context of what others experience, and can assist societies and publishers to work toward avoiding these ethical issues in the future. Professional discussions about ethics in nursing publications should be the subject of ongoing research and scientific inquiry.