Editor and Referee Conflicts of Interest

To guarantee a fair review process to all authors, the JFE does not allow its editor-in-chief and coeditors to handle submissions by the following categories of authors: advisors, advisees, current colleagues at the same institution (regardless of department), current or past coauthors, family members, or any other authors whose personal or professional ties to an editor may call into question the integrity of the review process. This list includes all coauthors, advisors, and advisees of an editor, regardless of the time since the editor worked with the author. In addition, any editor with a conflict of interest will be blinded from viewing the review process of that particular submission. To encourage referee impartiality, the handling editor will notify referees that their reports will be remain confidential with respect to the conflicted editor.

Submitting authors may make a suggestion for the editorial assignment. The editorial team tries to respect these suggestions as long as they are compatible with editorial workloads and expertise but must void any suggestion that violates the JFE’s conflict of interest rules.

The editor-in-chief cannot submit manuscripts to the JFE, although coeditors can submit manuscripts. In this case, the editor-in-chief assigns a guest editor, and the coeditor is blinded from viewing the review process.

The name of the editor who handles a manuscript will appear in the acknowledgments footnote.