What Sage expects from you

• Editor Expectations
• Working with your authors
• Working with your reviewers

Editor Expectations

We ask our Editors to:

• Maintain quality, transparency and integrity in what is published: publish the best quality content possible for the journal, uphold the highest standards of peer review, and ensure that editorial decisions are taken following thorough assessment by suitable peers and revision where necessary. 
• Maintain and promote consistent ethical policies for their journals.
• Oversee and act to enforce those policies as needed in a fair and consistent manner.
• Judge each submission on its own merits and not exclude authors based on their previous publication history.
• Ensure the confidentiality of the review process.
• Uphold the integrity of the peer review and publishing process and not i) require authors to cite the journal as a condition of publication, ii) suggest unnecessary self-citation.
• Ensure that reviewer comments sent back to authors are fair, unbiased and constructive and do not contain discriminatory or other offensive language. Remember that reviews can be edited before being returned to authors.
• If you are handling a manuscript and decide to provide a review of that manuscript yourself, ensure this is done transparently, as per COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.
• Exercise the highest standards of personal integrity in their work as Editor of the journal, recognizing and planning for instances where they could have a competing interest or the appearance of a competing interest.
• Work with authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board members as necessary to ensure they are sufficiently advised regarding their journal’s ethics and publishing policies and that the journal’s stewardship on ethical matters is fair, unbiased and timely.
• Maintain an Editorial Board that reflects the various disciplines in the field and is international, gender balanced and ethnically diverse.

Working with your authors

We ask authors publishing in Sage journals to:

• Read and abide by the journal’s manuscript submission guidelines. Please work with your Publishing Editor if you feel these are less than fully transparent, clear or accurate.
• Only submit papers that are original, their own work, and that have not been submitted concurrently to any other journal.
• Adhere to all research ethics guidelines of their discipline, particularly where human or animal subjects are involved, and include relevant declarations and statements confirming such. Details of what is required by your journal can be found in your submission guidelines.
• Ensure any real or apparent conflicting or competing interest is clearly stated on submission of their paper (this would include funding assistance).
• Ensure their data is true and not manipulated, that it is their own or that they have permission to use data reproduced in their paper.
• Where material is taken from other sources (including their own published writing) the source is clearly cited and that where appropriate permission is obtained.
• Ensure their work does not infringe on any rights of others, including privacy rights and intellectual property rights.
• Comply with the stated authorship criteria, including accurately representing the authorship of the paper, ensuring that all individuals credited as authors participated in the actual authorship of the work, that all who participated are credited and have given consent for publication, and that others are acknowledged appropriately.
• Contact the Editor regarding any changes in authorship that may be required either before or after publication. Please let your Publishing Editor know of any disputes around authorship. Details of our process for handing these can be found in the section on authorship disputes below.
• Contact the Editor to identify and correct any material errors upon discovery, whether prior or subsequent to publication of their work. If an author contacts you about making changes to their published article, please inform your Publishing Editor. More information on Sage’s policy in terms of correcting the academic record can be found in the section on Publication ethics and practices below.

Sage requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement for all articles we publish. The corresponding author is asked to warrant that they are authorized to sign on behalf of themselves and, in the case of multi-authored papers, on behalf of all other authors. Sage’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is a licence agreement under which the author retains copyright in the work but grants Sage the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than Sage. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. The contributor agreement includes details of what the author is permitted to do with their article; this information can also be found within the copyright and permissions pages on the Sage Journal Gateway. Please note that an article cannot be published in the journal without a contributor agreement. If we do not have the signed contributor’s publishing agreement at proof correction stage, we will not proceed to publication.

Working with your reviewers

We ask reviewers to:

• Provide their expert, objective assessment of the manuscript, and provide fair, unbiased, and constructive comments where possible. 
• Return their referee report in the format requested and in a timely manner.
• Take responsibility for declaring any conflicts of interest that could affect the impartiality of their reviewing and decline to review where appropriate. If your journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts, this is typically captured as part of the invitation to review.
• Maintain the confidentiality of the peer review process.
• Abide by COPE’s Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers