Editors duty of confidentiality to authors

LJPC editors treat all submitted manuscripts as confidential documents, which means they will not divulge information about a manuscript to anyone without the authors' permission. During the process of manuscript review the following people may also have access to manuscripts:

• editors and editorial staff at the LJPC, including medical students on placement and occasional overseas visitors - usually doctors or editors from other journals
• external reviewers, including statisticians and experts in trial methods
• members of the journal's various editorial "hanging" committees - the final stage in our peer review process for original papers and other unsolicited manuscripts
• the only occasion when details about a manuscript might be passed to a third party without the authors’ permission is if the editor suspects serious research misconduct—see below.

What we do if we suspect research or professional misconduct

• if an editor has concerns that a submitted paper describes something that might be considered to constitute research or professional misconduct, the case may be discussed with the LJPC Ethics Committee.
• The LJPC’s Ethics Committee - The committee scrutinises a small proportion of papers, which are referred to them by LJPC editors or reviewers. Authors of these papers are informed of such referral beforehand and given feedback from the committee after the meeting. The committee's decisions are posted in an anonymised form on bmj.com (please see the separate section on the LJPC ethics committee and two editorials: An Ethics committee for the LJPC and The LJPC's ethics committee is open for business)
• if the case cannot be resolved by discussion with the author(s), and the editor still has concerns, s/he may report the case to the appropriate authorities. If, during the course of reviewing a paper, an editor is alerted to possible problems (for example, fraudulent data) in another publication, the LJPC editor may contact the journal in which the previous publication appeared to raise the concern
• the LJPC is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Cases of research or publication misconduct may also be referred to COPE in an anonymised format.