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Houghton St Press is an imprint of LSE Press, publishing journals run by or for students. Our publishing ethics policy is founded upon LSE’s Ethics Code, which is a set of core principles underpinning life at LSE. The LSE Ethics Code can be found here.
Houghton St Press is based within the Library at the London School of Economics. Individual journals have their own editorial boards and editors-in-chief, who should be guided by this policy and supported by Library staff.
Each member of the Houghton St Press publishing community should be aware of and follow the Ethics code outlined by the School. Also see the section on “Ethical Approval” below.
Each member of the Houghton St Press publishing community is required to make decisions in a transparent way without regard to age, disability, gender (including gender identity), ethnicity and race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or social and economic background.
Houghton St Press follows the School’s guidance on authorship and considers authors should, at a minimum, have made a substantial contribution to the work and be accountable for the work in its published form.
Although authorship conventions vary across disciplines, and Houghton St Press journals may have additional authorship guidance, substantial intellectual or scholarly contribution must include one and ideally a combination of two or more of the following:
This is the minimum threshold for authorship, and researchers should recognise that practice varies e.g., journals, disciplines, and institutions may require a higher threshold. Therefore, additional criteria may be applied for authorship in some publications.
The above principles are not intended for use as a means to disqualify students from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to review and approve the final version to be published. Therefore, all individuals who have made any of the above listed contributions should be given the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.
Other contributions to the publication that do not fall under “author” should be acknowledged, and we recommend the use of the CRediT system to define the role of each contributor.
For further guidance on good authorship practices (and unacceptable authorship practices and resolving disputes), see LSE Principles of Authorship.
Houghton St Press adopts COPE’s position on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in research:
“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.”
- COPE position statement, 13 February 2023, https://publicationethics.org/cope-position-statements/ai-author
Research involving human subjects, human material, or human data, must have been performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Where the author is an LSE student, the studies must have been approved in accordance with the LSE Research Ethics Policy and Procedures, and the authors should include a statement within the text detailing that this approval was granted. For students from outside LSE, they should include approval from their own institutional processes. For most research involving human subjects, informed consent to participate in the study should be obtained and documented from participants. The identity of the research subject should be anonymised whenever possible. Where this is not possible, participants must have explicitly given their consent to be identified in the research[1]. Please refer to the LSE guidance on Informed Consent.
Authors must ensure work submitted is entirely original, not plagiarised and work that is not their own has been fully referenced within the text. Self-plagiarism (“presenting one’s own previously published work as though it were new”[2]) is not permitted and authors must reference their previous work if publishing secondary articles from the same research.
As with all content submitted for publication, the author(s) must ensure that they have permission to use all third-party content included within the submission, including those sourced using AI.
LSE students will find valuable resources on referencing at the LSE LIFE Moodle.
In line with LSE’s policy on conflicts of interest, the purpose of Houghton St Press’s conflict of interest policy is to require the disclosure and management of actual, potential or perceived conflicts of interest.
Houghton St Press’s policy follows UKRI’s definition of a conflict of interest as ‘a situation in which an individual’s ability to exercise judgement or act in one role is, could be, or is seen to be impaired or otherwise influenced by their involvement in another role or relationship.’
‘Conflicts might occur if individuals have, for example:
‘The existence of an actual, perceived or potential conflict of interest does not necessarily imply wrongdoing on anyone’s part. However, any private, personal or commercial interests which give rise to such a conflict of interest must be recognised, disclosed appropriately and either eliminated or properly managed.’
Conflicts of interest do not always prohibit publishing with Houghton St Press or its journals, but they must be declared during the publishing process, and if necessary acknowledged within the publication and made clear to readers. Specifically:
Conflicts of interest that arise or come to light during the publishing process should be brought to the attention of the Houghton St Press team immediately.
In line with LSE’s research data management policy, we recognise that research data requires careful management for long term preservation. Where appropriate for the type of data and study conducted, we encourage authors to share data that underpins Houghton St Press publications in a public data repository, along with any scripts or codes that may have been used in data analysis. All data should be referenced in publications within a data access statement including a direct link to the data deposit (DOI is preferred) and a citation.
Where data contains personal information, is commercially sensitive or sourced from a subscription database it should not be shared and a data access statement should include the reasons for data absence outlined.
If you are unsure whether or not you can share your research data contact datalibrary@lse.ac.uk and there are recommendations for acceptable social science repositories on the research data webpage.
LSE students retain the copyright in their work, except in the circumstances listed in 3.1.1 of the LSE Intellectual Property Policy. Students from other institutions should check their home IP policy to ensure they are free to enter a licencing agreement with LSE and Houghton St Press.
Houghton St Press is an open access publisher, and all our publications are free to read. We do not request a transfer of copyright from our authors, but licence publications using the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence allowing full re-use with credit to authors.
Authors are responsible for securing permissions to include any material from third party sources in their publications. Any queries or complaints regarding third party copyright should be directed to Houghton St Press: l.lambe@lse.ac.uk
Articles published on the Houghton St Press platform are written and reviewed by students. Authors have the right at any time to request the removal of their articles from a Houghton St Press journal by contacting l.lambe@lse.ac.uk
Houghton St Press and its editors will treat all journal submissions as confidential. Authors will be informed when manuscripts go out for review. Editors and reviewers must protect the confidentiality of all manuscripts from submission to “in press”. Where anonymous peer review is in place, editors must protect the confidentiality of all communications with reviewers, their identity, and identities of authors for double-anonymous reviews. Unpublished material seen by editors or reviewers must not be used in their own research without written permission from authors.
All research publications by Houghton St Press will undergo a rigorous peer review process. Peer reviewing arrangements for individual journals published by Houghton St Press are determined by the editorial board for each journal. Details of their specific arrangements are available on their individual pages. Houghton St Press supports a range of peer review models, depending on which is most suitable for the journal.
Complaints about our review, publishing processes and publications can be raised by anyone at any time, with either a journal editor or the Houghton St Press team.
[1] There may be some exceptions, for instance where the researcher is using archival or publicly available secondary data.
[2] American Psychological Association (2010) The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Sixth Edition, p.170.
We register our journals and books with as many suitable indexes as possible. All of our article metadata are openly available for harvesting by indexing services via OAI-PMH and the journals are registered with Open Archives for discovery.
Houghton St Press content is LOCKSS enabled, and copies of all Houghton St Press publications are made available from LSE Research Online, the School’s open access repository.