Publication Policies and Ethics statement

FPQ is a member of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), and as such complies with their statements of transparency and best practices. DOAJ partners with organizations including the guidelines of Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/), and we observe COPE practices, especially COPE's flowcharts when dealing with suspected violations of publication ethics. We also take as a guide the philosophy-specific white paper, Just Ideas? The Status and Future of Publication Ethics in Philosophy: A White Paper – Publication Ethics (publication-ethics.org), authored by Yannik Thiem, Kris F. Sealey, Amy E. Ferrer, Adriel M. Trott, and Rebecca Kennison.

Below are brief statements of specific journal policies.

Allegations of misconduct

Plagiarism

Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) statements of transparency and best practices include their statement that "in the event that a journal's publisher or editors are made aware of any allegation of research misconduct relating to a published article in their journal, the publisher or editor shall follow COPE's [Committee on Publication Ethics] guidelines (or equivalent) in dealing with allegations." Concerns and questions on the part of authors, referees, or readers should be brought to us at feministphilosophyquarterly [at] gmail [dot] com. Our process follows COPE recommendations as published in COPE Council's COPE Flowcharts and infographics — Plagiarism in a published article — English. https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.2.2 (©2021 Committee on Publication Ethics (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0))

Appeals or complaints

Appeals of editorial decisions, complaints, or more general concerns can be directed to journal editors at feministphilosophyquarterly [at] gmail [dot] com. Emails of concerns are shared with all serving members of the editorial team and receive responses when editors come to consensus on reply.

Defamation/Libel

Feminist Philosophy Quarterly is published by Western University in Ontario, Canada. Canadian law permits more openings to claims of defamation than does U.S. law, with which (as our analytics suggest) most of our readers are more familiar. For example, in Canada there is no requirement to show that an author or guest-editor acted with malice. A finding of fault is not necessary to prove a claim of defamation.

In Canada, a claim of defamation needs to show that a statement was:

  • False
  • Damaging to reputation (slander) or could tend to damage reputation to a reasonable person (defamation per se [need not show actual damage])
  • Communicated to a third party

An instance of publication is sufficient for a charge and retraction does not necessarily obviate defamation; therefore, editors reserve the right to reject submissions when we enter into an editorial relationship with an author or guest-editor, if we find statements in any submissions or written introductions that may be unwarranted and false, including and not limited to unsupported or unjustified claims of fact as to whether someone is gendered, raced, or sexually oriented in particular ways, or a person with a disability or ability, in contexts in which states of gender, race, orientation, disability, or other are relevant to that person’s public persona, previous claims of fact about themselves, or their membership in a group.

Philosophers tend to be highly argumentative; in publications it is quite possible to find occasions on which authors have posited rather than argued for, e.g., characterizations of a writer’s criticism as ridicule, disagreement as hostility, or omission as malicious. Absent argumentation, these can possibly be argued to be defamatory to a living philosopher whose reputation depends in part on being perceived to be a professional writer of argumentation. 

Retraction in the event of plagiarism or defamation found post-publication

Since we observe COPE practices and publication guidelines, we follow their Retraction Guidelines which advise that “Editors should consider retracting a publication if… there is some serious legal issue (eg, libel, privacy),” and as above, concerns and questions on the part of authors, referees, or readers should be brought to us at feministphilosophyquarterly [at] gmail [dot] com. 

Conflicts of interest of editors, authors, and reviewers

In philosophy, conflicts of interests may include the interests of authors, reviewers, or editors in knowing the identities of authors or referees, and thereby ensuring un-/favorable reviews or ensuring rejection or publication of known individuals for reasons unrelated to the quality of scholarship. FPQ pursues triply anonymized review processes whenever possible to avert such conflicts of interest, and in rare cases where this is not possible, requests of referees to disclose any relationship with identifiable (for example, invited) authors. Concerns that conflicts of interests occur should be brought to the attention of editors at feministphilosophyquarterly [at] gmail [dot] com. 

Authorship criteria

Submission to FPQ includes requiring submitters to indicate that those listed as authors are the sole authors of the submitted work and agree to be identified as such. Authors take responsibility for the content of the work and participate in its written formation. 

In light of these criteria, we do not allow AI tools to be listed as authors of papers. We take the perspective expressed in COPE's position statement: "COPE joins organisations, such as WAME and the JAMA Network among others, to state that AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper. AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements. Authors who use AI tools in the writing of a manuscript, production of images or graphical elements of the paper, or in the collection and analysis of data, must be transparent in disclosing in the Materials and Methods (or similar section) of the paper how the AI tool was used and which tool was used. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, even those parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics."