Policies

Contents

This section outlines FSR's editorial and publication policies. Authors are encouraged to review all relevant policies before submitting.

Publication Ethics

The Financial Services Review (FSR) adopts policies that are aligned with the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ensuring transparency and integrity across all stages of the publication process. As a Diamond Open Access journal, FSR makes all published research freely available to readers and imposes no submission or article processing fees on authors, reflecting our commitment to equitable and unrestricted access to knowledge.

Research Misconduct

FSR is committed to the integrity of the research process. The following procedures apply when research misconduct is suspected or alleged, including, but not limited to, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, and self-plagiarism.

Authors of original research reports are expected to present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. The underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

FSR accepts only original manuscripts. Authors should appropriately cite or quote the work and/or words of others. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work should also be cited.

As a general rule, papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal. No part of a submission may be under consideration for publication elsewhere, nor may the manuscript have been previously published in a peer-reviewed journal or as a book chapter (except as a brief abstract). Submitting the same paper to more than one journal constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Using material (including tables, figures, and data or extended text passages) from one’s own prior work, without documentation (e.g., an appropriate citation), is considered a duplicate publication - self-plagiarism - and is not allowed.

FSR takes publication integrity very seriously. All submissions are routinely checked for plagiarism. The journal uses: https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/ to screen submissions for plagiarism.

The following procedures describe the FSR’s approach to identifying and addressing allegations of research misconduct.

    • Reporting Allegations: Anyone with knowledge or suspicion of research misconduct is encouraged to report it to FSR’s editor.
    • Preliminary Assessment: Upon receiving an allegation, the editor or designated Editorial Board member will conduct a preliminary assessment to determine the veracity of the allegation. If the allegation appears credible and specific, an investigation will be initiated.
    • Investigation Process: The editor will appoint an impartial committee, comprised of at least one Associate Editor and two Editorial Board members, to conduct an investigation. The committee will collect and review relevant evidence, including data, coding syntax, and other documentation, before interviewing the relevant parties.
    • Confidentiality and Protections: Confidentiality will be maintained throughout the investigation process to protect the privacy and reputations of the accused, the person who reported the irregularity, and the investigative committee.
    • Opportunity to Respond: If evidence of misconduct or an error is noted, the paper’s author(s) will be informed of the allegation(s). They will have the opportunity to respond and present their case to the committee. The committee will consider all responses and evidence before making a determination.
    • Decision and Consequences: Based on the committee’s findings, the editor, in consultation with the Journal’s Advisory Board and the President of the Academy of Financial Services (the Journal’s publisher), will make a determination regarding the extent of misconduct. If research misconduct is confirmed, appropriate consequences will be initiated, which may include retraction of the publication, a sanction, and/or reporting the occurrence to relevant stakeholders.
    • Appeals Process: All parties involved in the investigation have the right to appeal the decision. Appeals must be submitted in writing.
    • Notification and Reporting: The investigation’s outcome will be communicated to relevant stakeholders, including funding agencies and institutional authorities.

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Authorship and Contributorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. Honorary or guest authorship, where an individual is listed without having made a qualifying contribution, and ghost authorship, where a qualifying contributor is excluded from the author list, are both prohibited.

The corresponding author ensures that all contributing co-authors and no uninvolved persons are included in the author list. The corresponding author will also verify that all co-authors have approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication. The corresponding author should be familiar with the original data and take responsibility for the integrity of the manuscript. If the final paper, or part of the paper, is found to be faulty or fraudulent, all co-authors may share responsibility. 

If an authorship dispute arises during review or after publication, the matter should be reported to the FSR editor. The editor will follow COPE guidance in investigating and resolving the dispute.

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Artificial Intelligence Use

FSR recognizes the value of AI tools in research and writing while maintaining clear standards for transparency and accountability. Authors, reviewers, and editors each have specific obligations under this policy. [View full AI policy ]

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Peer Review

The double-blind peer-review process at FSR assists the editor and the editorial board in making editorial decisions and may also help the author improve the paper. The reviewers’ and editors’ responsibilities are described below.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

FSR expects reviewers’ conduct to be prompt, confidential, and objective. As experts in the field, reviewers should identify cases in which relevant published work referred to in the paper has not been cited in the reference section. They should indicate whether observations or arguments derived from other publications are accompanied by their respective sources. Reviewers have a duty to notify the editor of any suspicion of research misconduct, such as any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge, or unethical use of AI.

Peer reviewers will be required to acknowledge FSR’s policy on the use of AI in their own review process when accepting manuscripts for review.

Promptness. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.

Confidentiality. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. They must not be disclosed to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editor.

Standards of Objectivity. Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. 

Editor Responsibilities

The editor is responsible for deciding which of the papers submitted to FSR will be published. The editor will evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, originality, clarity, the study’s validity, and its relevance to FSR’s scope. Current legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and plagiarism will also be considered.

Manuscripts will be treated confidentially throughout the editorial and peer-review process. The editor, associate editors, and associated editorial staff must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisors, and the publisher (The Academy of Financial Services), as appropriate.

Editors have to comply with their obligations under FSR’s policy on the use of AI.

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Conflicts of interest

Authors: All authors should include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

Reviewers: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

Editors: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted paper will not be used by the editor or the members of the editorial board for their own research purposes without the author's explicit written consent. Editors must recuse themselves from handling manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest as a result of competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions associated with the papers.

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Intellectual Property and Licensing

Author(s) retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restriction.

All papers published in the Journal are covered by CC BY-NC 4.0, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International.

This license requires that reusers give credit to the creator. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only. Credit must be given to the creator. Only noncommercial use of an author's work is permitted by reusers. Noncommercial means not primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.

In addition, FSR grants to the UGA Libraries a worldwide, non-exclusive license to all content published by the Journal, including metadata, that is necessary to publish, transmit, and index the Journal and to preserve its content over time.

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Prior Publication(s)

FSR acknowledges that authors commonly share working papers prior to formal journal submission. The following clarifies what does and does not constitute prior publication for FSR’s purposes.

The following are not considered prior publications and do not preclude submission:

  • Working papers posted on the authors' institutional website or repository
  • Papers deposited on working paper servers (e.g., SSRN, NBER, RePEC)
  • Doctoral dissertations available through an institutional repository or by a third party on behalf of a college or university

Authors who submit a manuscript that exists in working paper form are required to disclose this at the time of submission and must ensure the working paper is clearly identified as a non-peer-reviewed version. Upon acceptance, authors should update any publicly posted version to reference the FSR publication.

The following are considered prior publications and preclude submission:

  • Papers or articles published in peer-reviewed journals, whether in digital or print format
  • Book chapters containing original data or analysis
  • Conference proceedings, including posters, are published in a citable, peer-reviewed format.

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Ethical Oversight

FSR recognizes that some research submitted to the journal may involve human participants, for instance, through surveys, interviews, or the use of personal financial data. In such cases, authors are expected to have followed the ethical standards applicable in their institution or jurisdiction, which may include obtaining approval from an institutional review board (IRB), human research ethics committee (HREC), or equivalent body.

Authors should confirm in their manuscript that any applicable ethical approvals were obtained and that participants provided informed consent where required. Where formal ethical review was not required or not available, authors should briefly explain the basis on which the research was conducted and confirm that participants' privacy and confidentiality were protected.

FSR does not routinely require submission of ethical approval documentation, but the editor reserves the right to request evidence of ethical oversight where concerns arise. Submissions that appear to have disregarded the welfare or privacy of research participants may be rejected or referred for further review.

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Data sharing and reproducibility

Authors could be asked to provide the raw data of their study, together with the paper, for editorial review, and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least ten years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data center), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights concerning proprietary data do not preclude their release.

Where data cannot be made publicly available, authors are encouraged to include a data availability statement in their manuscript explaining the reasons. This may reflect legal restrictions, participant confidentiality obligations, or proprietary constraints. The absence of publicly available data will not in itself disqualify a manuscript from consideration, provided a clear explanation is given.

To support reproducibility, authors are encouraged to share, where appropriate and permissible, the materials necessary to replicate their findings. This may include coding syntax, analytical scripts, survey instruments, or other relevant documentation. These materials may be deposited in the same repository as the underlying data or made available upon reasonable request.

FSR recognizes that research in personal finance and financial planning frequently involves sensitive individual-level data. Authors are not expected to compromise participant privacy or violate data governance obligations to comply with this policy. Where full data sharing is not possible, partial sharing, aggregated data, or detailed methodological documentation are acceptable alternatives.

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Post publication discussion or commentary

FSR welcomes post-publication engagement with published research. Readers, authors, and practitioners are encouraged to contribute to ongoing scholarly dialogue by submitting comments, responses, or short commentaries related to articles published in FSR.

Correspondence and Commentary. Correspondence regarding published articles may be submitted to the editor at fsr@academyfinancial.org. The editor will determine, at their discretion, whether submitted correspondence warrants formal publication. Where correspondence raises substantive scholarly points, the original authors may be invited to respond. Published correspondence and author responses will be linked to the original article.

Corrections and Concerns. Where post-publication correspondence identifies a potential error, methodological concern, or ethical issue, it will be handled in accordance with FSR's [Corrections, Retractions, and Expressions of Concern] policy.

Scope and Standards. All post-publication contributions are subject to the same standards of respectful scholarly discourse expected of submissions to FSR. Contributions that are defamatory, legally problematic, or outside the scope of the journal will not be considered.

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Corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern about fundamental errors in published work

FSR takes all ethical issues related to submitted manuscripts and published articles seriously. If any ethical violation is detected, such as plagiarism, data fabrication, or multiple submissions, the editor will take appropriate action, which may include publication of an erratum, retraction of the paper, or informing relevant institutions.

When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the FSR editor or publisher and to cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper in the form of an erratum.

A correction is issued when a minor error in a published article does not affect the overall findings or conclusions. A retraction is issued when findings are no longer reliable due to misconduct or honest error that materially affects the conclusions. An expression of concern may be issued when an investigation is ongoing or when evidence is inconclusive, but sufficient concern exists to alert readers.

FSR is committed to issuing corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern promptly and transparently, in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Handling of Complaints and Appeals

Any author, reviewer, or reader who has a concern about the editorial process, a publication decision, or the conduct of an editor or reviewer is encouraged to raise it with the FSR editor in the first instance by contacting fsr@academyfinancial.org. All complaints will be acknowledged promptly and investigated with due care. Where a complaint concerns the editor directly, it should be directed to the President of the Academy of Financial Services at president@academyfinancial.org.

Authors who wish to appeal a rejection decision are welcome to do so if they believe a material error was made in the review process. Appeals based solely on disagreement with reviewers' assessments will not be considered. Appeals should be submitted in writing to the editor, clearly stating the grounds for appeal. The editor's decision on appeal is final.

FSR follows the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in handling complaints and appeals.

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Reference

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (2017). Core Practices. Retrieved from: https://publicationethics.org/core-practices.