Ethics and Malpractice Statement

These Journal of Tax Administration’s ethics and malpractice standards are based on the principles laid out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

The Journal

1. The Journal of Tax Administration is an open access publication and does not charge readership fees.
2. The journal does not charge authors submission fees or offer any publication payments.
3. The journal is funded by the University of Exeter Business School and the Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) and does not receive any funding from advertisers.

Key Ethics and Malpractice Policies

Details of how we approach the following key matters relating to ethics and malpractice can be found below:

Authorship and Contributorship

Our policies relating to authorship and contributorship are laid out in our Submissions Guidelines.

Complaints and Appeals

Our complaints and appeals process is detailed in full on our Complaints and Appeals Process page.

Conflicts of Interest

Our policies for authors regarding conflicts of interest can be found within our Submissions Guidelines. Our policies for peer reviewers regarding conflicts of interest can be found within our Peer Reviewer Responsibilities page.

Data Analysis, Sharing, and Reproducibility

Our data analysis, sharing, and reproducibility policies can be found within our Submissions Guidelines.

Ethical Oversights

We require everyone associated with the journal to comply with the highest ethical standards. This includes authors, readers, reviewers, journal staff, and third-parties working with or for the journal. Should you have any concerns about ethical oversights, please contact us by email. You can find out more about how we handle concerns and complaints on our Complaints and Appeals Process page.

Intellectual Property

You can find out more about our intellectual property policies on our Open Access, Copyright, and Licensing Policies page.

Post-Publication Discussion

If you wish comment on or critique any work published in the Journal of Tax Administration, please email the managing editors in the first instance. You can find out more about how we handle complaints on our Complaints and Appeals Process page.

Corrections, Retractions, Clarifications, and Apologies

Our corrections, retractions, clarifications. and apologies procedure is detailed on our Complaints and Appeals Process page.

Plagiarism and Other Attribution Issues

You can find out more about this on our Appropriate Attribution and Plagiarism Policy page.

Scholarly Integrity

We make every effort to ensure that all work published in the journal meets professional research ethics and integrity standards. If you wish to submit a manuscript to the journal, you should first read our Submissions section, which includes our requirements in respect of a range of issues relating to scholarly integrity.

Should you have any concerns with regard to the scholarly integrity of anything published in JOTA, including concerns relating to, for example, research ethics, data integrity, or plagiarism, please contact the editors by email.

The editors will investigate your concerns following the guidelines set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its “Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors”. They will, in conjunction with the authors, arrange for works to be corrected, clarified, or retracted, and/or apologies to be made, if necessary.

Further information is provided on our Complaints and Appeals Process page.

Roles and Responsibilities

In the following sections, we provide additional information about the journal and the roles and responsibilities of its editors, peer reviewers, and authors:

The Editors

1. Information about the journal’s editors can be found here: Our Editorial Team.

The Editors’ Roles

1. The journal’s editors are responsible for deciding whether articles, short notes, commentaries, and reviews submitted to the journal will be published in it or not. Further information can be found on our Submissions, Review, and Publications Processes page.
2. Overall responsibility for the content included in each issue of the Journal of Tax Administration and the timing of the content’s publication lies with the managing editors. The editors aim to publish at least two issues of the journal each year.
3. The journal’s editors make their decisions in accordance with:

• the journal’s aims, focus, and scope;
• the journal’s submissions guidelines, and general policies;
• libel, plagiarism, and copyright infringement laws;
• other relevant legislation.

4. Articles, commentaries, short notes, and reviews submitted to the journal are assessed on their academic merit, and whether or not they are relevant to the journal’s aims, focus, and scope. In order to assess their academic merit, the editors consider aspects such as the clarity, significance, and originality of the work. They do not take personal information about the authors, such as their race, ethnic origin, gender, sexual orientation, academic or political affiliations, or religious beliefs, into account.
5. If the editors consider that an article or short note may be suitable for publication in the journal, that paper will be subject to a double-blind peer review process. The editors are responsible for selecting peer reviewers (usually two) to review each paper. These peer reviewers will have expertise in a relevant academic field. The editors will oversee the peer review process and provide the corresponding author of each paper with the reviewers’ feedback about their work. The editors will also deal with any declarations of conflicts of interests made by any potential reviewers appropriately. Commentaries and reviews submitted to the journal are not subject to the peer review process. These are, instead, reviewed by members of the journal’s editorial team.
6. The editors will take all reasonable steps to ensure that all work published in the journal meets professional research ethics and integrity standards. If the editors are made aware of allegations of research misconduct in relation to any of the work published in the journal, they will investigate these, following the guidelines set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its “Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors”. Any such allegations should be reported to the editors by email in the first instance.
7. The editors, in conjunction with the authors, will arrange for works published to be corrected, clarified, or retracted, and/or apologies to be made, if necessary. Requests for corrections, retractions, clarifications, and apologies should be sent to the editors by email.
8. The editors will treat all submissions as confidential. They will not disclose information about work submitted to anyone other than the work’s authors, other editors of the journal, reviewers, potential reviewers, and those involved in the management, production, and publication of the journal unless that work has been accepted for publication. The editors will not use unpublished work submitted to the journal within their own research without the authors’ consent.
9. Further information can be found on our “Submissions, Review, and Publication Processes” page.

The Peer Reviewers

Information about our peer reviewers can be found here: Our Peer Reviewers.

Peer Reviewers’ Roles

1. The journal operates a double-blind peer review system for academic papers. Therefore, the peer reviewers will not be aware of the identity of the authors of papers under review and the authors will not be informed of the identity of the peer reviewers assessing their work.
2. Peer reviewers are responsible for providing objective, accurate, prompt, and justifiable reviews of academic papers submitted to the journal.
3. Peer reviewers must have the appropriate qualifications and expertise to enable them to provide accurate reviews of the work assigned to them. The editors will make every effort to select appropriately qualified reviewers. However, if a potential reviewer feels that they are not qualified to provide a review of a particular paper, they should notify the journal’s editors as soon as possible so another reviewer can be selected.
4. Peer reviewers should agree deadlines for the completion of their reviews with the journal’s editors before embarking on these reviews. In the event that any peer reviewer will be unable to review a paper by the agreed deadline, they should notify the managing editors as soon as possible.
5. Peer reviewers will treat all submissions as confidential. They will not disclose information about work submitted to anyone other than editors of the journal and those involved in the management, production, and publication of the journal without the managing editors’ explicit consent unless that work has been accepted for publication. The peer reviewers will not use unpublished work submitted to the journal within their own research without the authors’ consent.
6. Peer reviewers must not retain the manuscripts submitted to them once the review process is complete or make copies of these manuscripts.
7. If a peer reviewer has any conflict of interests (whether financial, academic, commercial, political, or personal) with regard to a paper assigned to them, they should declare these interests to the editors immediately. The editors will then decide whether the reviewer should withdraw from the process or whether they can proceed. If the editors decide that the reviewer can proceed, they will disclose the conflict of interest to the readers of the journal upon publication of the paper.
8. If a peer reviewer suspects that any academic misconduct has taken place in respect of the production of paper that they are reviewing or within any research study that paper is based upon, they should notify the managing editors immediately.
9. Peer reviewers should include details of any relevant published work that has not been cited in the paper that they are reviewing within their report.
10. If a peer reviewer notices that a submitted manuscript has significant similarities with any other published or unpublished work, they should notify the managing editors as soon as possible.
11. If a peer reviewer believes that a submitted manuscript has been produced using AI (including tools such as ChatGPT), they should notify the managing editors as soon as possible, providing their reasons for believing this.
12. Peer reviewers must not use AI tools (including ChatGPT) when reviewing papers.
13. You can find out more on our “Reviewer Guidelines” and “Submission, Review, and Publication Processes” pages.

Authors

Authors’ Roles

1. Authors submitting papers to the Journal of Tax Administration must follow the journal’s submissions guidelines.
2. All papers submitted should be unpublished and should not be under review by any other publication. Should an author wish to submit their paper elsewhere while it is under review by the journal, they should notify the managing editors and withdraw their paper.
3. All authors submitting papers to the Journal of Tax Administration should have gained appropriate research ethics approval for the research on which their paper is based, if applicable.
4. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that anyone who is listed as an author of a paper has:

• made a significant contribution to the paper and any research studies presented in it;
• approved the final draft of it;
• agreed for it to be submitted to and published in the Journal of Tax Administration;
• agreed to be named as an author.

5. The authors must ensure that anyone who has contributed to a paper or any research studies presented in it has their contribution acknowledged within the paper. The authors must obtain the contributors’ written permission to do this.
6. Authors should acknowledge any individuals, groups, or organisations who have provided them with funding to produce their paper or to carry out any research studies detailed within it.
7. Authors are obliged to notify the managing editors of any conflict of interests that they are aware of in respect of any paper that they submit or the research detailed within that paper.
8. Authors must ensure that:

• their work is original;
• their work would not be considered to be a “redundant submission” (please see the Previously Published and Redundant Work” section of our Submissions Guidelines for full details;
• any other studies or works that are discussed or referred to within their paper, or which have influenced their work, are referenced appropriately and in full.

        Allegations of plagiarism or self-plagiarism will be treated extremely seriously.

9. Authors must not use AI (including tools such as ChatGPT) to produce their papers or to generate images contained within them.
10. Any information that has been obtained by the authors during private communications can only be   used if the authors have obtained explicit permission from the other parties involved in those communications.
11. Authors must not include information obtained while carrying out confidential work or engaging in confidential discussions unless they have the permission from appropriate sources.
12. By submitting a paper to the Journal of Tax Administration, authors agree to participate in the journal’s peer review process. They agree to provide the peer reviewers and the journal’s editors with any additional information or clarifications required promptly and in full. If revisions are required in order for a paper to be publishable, the authors should revise the work by the deadline stipulated. They should also provide a statement indicating how they have responded to each issue raised by the reviewers.
13. Authors must ensure that their study data has been collected, analysed, presented, and interpreted accurately, in an open and honest manner, and according to the standard practices of their academic discipline. It should also be reproducible.
14. Authors should be willing and able to provide the journal’s reviewers and editors with raw data from the research on which their paper is based if required and, should JOTA publish their paper, to provide this data to other researchers on request.
15. If the journal’s editors or the authors of a paper which has been published in the journal become aware that there are any inaccuracies or errors in that paper, it is the authors’ responsibility to correct or retract it. If notified about any such issues, the authors should notify the managing editors immediately. The managing editors will then work with the authors to resolve the situation. Should the authors believe that the information included in their paper was, in fact, correct, they will be required to provide the managing editors with proof to support their claim.