EASE Statement of endorsement of the Leiden Declaration

EASE is pleased to become a signatory to the Declaration on transparent editorial policies for academic journals issued at the end of 2018 by the Institute for Science in Society in the Netherlands. This Declaration was discussed at a workshop held in Leiden, July 2018. Representatives from publishers, (managing) editors, researchers and librarians participated, including two members of EASE Council. One of the main conclusions of the workshop was the acknowledged need for journals to be more transparent about their editorial policies.

This workshop output resulted in a Declaration on Transparent Journal Policies, drafted and agreed by all workshop participants.

The Declaration can be read online at: https://www.ru.nl/science/isis/research/transparency-declaration/

In addition to the transparency objectives outlined in the Declaration, EASE would like to add one further item:

Research undertaken on biomedical journals in 2016 found that journals have widely varying processes for dealing with appeals from authors, and rarely describe their process online (Dambha-Miller and Jones, 2017). In light of this, EASE encourages all journal editor members to ensure that they have a stated policy for dealing with such problems, and that they make it transparent on their website.

Statement created: 28 February 2019

References:
Dambha‐Miller, H. and Jones, R. (2017), An appealing prospect? A survey into the numbers, outcomes, and editorial policies for appeals of rejected biomedical manuscripts. Learned Publishing, 30: 227-231. doi:10.1002/leap.1107