Appendix: Publishing policies and publishing ethics

Ethics of publishing concerns the relationships amongst editors, publishers, authors and referees - and also readers. Such policies or ethical codes might be adopted by journals, their publishers or publishing houses more generally. (Such policies include clearly ethical injunctions but also can contain broader rules.) However, current New Zealand University ethics codes do not appear to require the staff who are required to follow them to pay much attention to the ethics of publishing. Most (such as that of the University of Auckland) enjoin care for the privacy of respondents and also the respondents need to be given access to the reports for which they have contributed information (while not breaching the countervailing privacy principle). Academic publishing also occurs in an environment of powerful intellectual, financial, and sometimes political interests that may collide or compete.