Ethical considerations

A case published in a peer-reviewed journal is presumed to represent a reliable, high-quality contribution to the existing body of knowledge. Ethical behaviour on the part of editors, reviewers, authors and publishers is a major underpinning of the reliability and quality of these cases. In conformity with this belief, the International Journal of Case Studies in Management (IJCSM) adheres to the principles put forward in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors available on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s website (http://publicationethics.org/).

More specifically, the IJCSM’s editors (in-chief or associate) strive to:

• Preserve the journal’s intellectual independence from the organizations studied, regarding both the choice of said organizations as objects of study and the presentation angle of the cases.
• Ensure that no part of the material included is either libellous, leans towards explicit or implicit discrimination of any kind, or seems to encourage illegal behaviour.
• Systematically avoid conflicts of interest; they will, for instance, entrust to another editor the processing of cases they have authored or of cases submitted by authors to whom they are personally close.
• Ensure the transparency and fairness of the evaluation and decision process by communicating to authors the reviewers’ comments and by justifying their own editorial decisions with reference to the reviewers’ comments and to the journal’s editorial policy.
• Choose reviewers who are experts in the field of the case and can be expected to exercise enlightened and unbiased judgment.
• Ensure that the documents sent to reviewers are anonymous and do not identify the authors.
• Ensure that reviewers cannot be identified by authors.