Potential Editor–Author Conflicts of Interest: To Edit or Not To?
1 Independent researcher;
2 5GH Foundation, Hong Kong 999077, China
3 Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering, Case Western Reserve University, 2100 Adelbert Road, Cleveland, OH 44106, USA
4 Indexcat Inc., 2222 South Overlook Rd., Cleveland Heights, OH 44106, USA
5 Independent researcher, 1266 Oslo, Norway
* Corresponding author:
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 28 Sep 2024 / Accepted: 6 Oct 2025 / Published: 11 Nov 2025
Abstract
In recent years, the scientific community and its publications have come under scrutiny due to scandals involving the “publish or perish” culture, the dissemination of fabricated data, the emergence of paper mills, fraudulent peer review and the prevalence of low-quality publications. While various issues such as these have been highlighted in the literature, the role of the editor(s) in potential problematic or unethical situations has received only limited attention, especially the topic of editor–author conflicts – particularly cases where editors previously co-authored with one of the authors they are supposed to be evaluating – receives relatively little to no attention. Yet, recently a massive retraction of 43 papers involving potentially unethical editorial work and a very specific editor–author conflict reached headlines, indicating the importance of addressing this.
Keywords: conflict of interest; editor; research integrity; author; ethics
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CITE
Constrinus, R.; Wu, G.; Rodionov, V.; Oksvold, M.P. Potential Editor–Author Conflicts of Interest: To Edit or Not To? Controversial_Ideas 2025, 5, 11.
Constrinus R, Wu G, Rodionov V, Oksvold MP. Potential Editor–Author Conflicts of Interest: To Edit or Not To? Journal of Controversial Ideas. 2025; 5(3):11.
Constrinus, Relvor; Wu, Guangheng; Rodionov, Valentin; Oksvold, Morten P. 2025. "Potential Editor–Author Conflicts of Interest: To Edit or Not To?" Controversial_Ideas 5, no. 3: 11.
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