%0 Journal Article
%A Constrinus, Relvor Constrinus
%A Wu, Guangheng Wu
%A Rodionov, Valentin Rodionov
%A Oksvold, Morten P. Oksvold
%D 2025
%J Journal of Controversial Ideas

%@ 2694-5991

%V 5
%N 3
%P 11

%T Potential Editor–Author Conflicts of Interest: To Edit or Not To?
%M doi:10.63466/jci05030011
%U https://journalofcontroversialideas.org/article/5/3/305
%X 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.