Recently we have become aware of a case of scientific malpractice by an editor of two of our journals (SOIL and SE) who used the position as editor and reviewer to disproportionately promote citations to personal papers and associated journals. This is clearly considered a scientific malpractice following our standards of publication ethics and also following the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Investigations have shown that the same happened to a number of other major soil science journals and it might be an uncovered issue in communities other than soil science.

We would all agree that we have to prevent this from happening again. But how should practical guidelines for editors and reviewers actually look like? Are suggestions to further literature allowed and if so, to what extent? Do we have appropriate controlling mechanism in place to discover such malpractice early enough?

Editors and reviewers from various geoscientific disciplines, as well as other publishers and representatives from scientific associations are invited to join this session to share forces in discussing and formulating clear and strict guidelines to preserve the integrity of our science and our publications.