When I began editing a journal for academics, a journal of ethics, I hoped at least to avoid many of the ethical problems of editing. My experience as founder and editor-in-chief of Business Ethics Quarterly (BEQ)belies that hope. Ethical problems arose early and often.

Financing BEQ presented the first ethical issues. Because financing an academic journal is, at best, difficult, we devoted much discussion to the question: Should a journal of business ethics accept money from business corporations? We were especially concerned that corporate sponsorship might create conflicts of interest, for example, when the journal considered publishing articles questioning corporate behavior.

To date, we have not accepted financing from corporations, not even in the form of advertising, except from other academic journals and academic book publishers. But the question of corporate sponsorship still comes up every year at the meeting of the Board of the Society for Business Ethics, the overseer of the journal.

Because BEQ has so far not accepted corporate sponsorship, paid staff consists of one person, half-time. The managing editor, and the editorial review board, and I must donate our time. For its financial support, the journal must depend on the continued increase in number of subscribers and what our universities can provide.

Financing is one threat to a journal's independence, but institutional connections are another. An academic: journal should be independent from any particular school of thought, religious orientation, creed, or national perspective. Maintaining such independence for a journal has proved much easier than maintaining the appearance. Because much of the early work in business ethics was done at Catholic universities in the United States, it is not surprising that BEQ is housed and supported by Loyola University of Chicago, a Jesuit institution. For people familiar with universities, this connection will not seem problematic. All religiously affiliated institutions that are nationally recognized and accept federal funding are obligated both legally and in their charters to preserve freedom of speech.

To avoid the appearance of religious bias, the Society of Business Ethics developed a mission statement for the journal committing it to diversity, pluralism, and so on. This statement has not proved sufficient. We recently turned down a proposal for a special issue on the Catholic Bishops' Letter on the Economy to avoid appearing too closely identified with Catholic thinking.

The selection of the editorial review board presents more ethical-and political-problems. An editorial review board should include leaders in the field, reflect gender, race, and national diversity and, at an interdisciplinary journal, have representatives from a variety of disciplines. The board should include good reviewers, people who are relatively objective, know the field well, and turn in reviews on time. The board's membership should change often enough to prevent the board becoming a clique. Problems arise (a) when friends nominate themselves (these are often colleagues whom I was saving for the next term of editors), (b) when reviewers demonstrate a consistent bias for or against certain kinds of manuscripts, or (c) when reviewers do not return manuscripts. The academic reputation of a reviewer is often in inverse ratio to the likelihood of such problems occurring.

The tern of a member of BEQ's editorial review board is now five years. That has proved too long to allow me to ease out a questionable or slow reviewer gracefully.

BEQ has a double-blind review system: the author does not know the reviewers and the reviewers do not know the author. Yet sometimes authors leave "autobiographical signs" in their paper that cannot be eliminated. These "signs" can influence a reviewer positively or negatively. How should a reviewer deal with that potential for bias? How should the editor-in-chief deal with it?

Each article is reviewed by two editors, in most instances editors in different disciplines. In principle, this is ideal. In practice, reviewers can sharply disagree concerning the quality of a paper. Such disagreements can raise issues of fairness, since the perspective of one discipline may not be appreciated by another; yet, interdisciplinary reviewing of manuscripts is essential to avoid "old boyism" in acceptance of articles. Because I am a philosopher, my perspective, like that of each of my editors, is also bound to have a disciplinary bias.
Where there is disagreement, we solicit a third and sometimes a fourth review. As editor, I read all articles that are approved by two reviewers, all articles for which there is a split vote, and at least scan articles that are rejected by two or more reviewers, occasionally exercising my own judgment. As a result, some editors complain about the appearance of articles they rejected or would have rejected. Are they right to complain? Perhaps.

Because pure objectivity is impossible, we have tried to reduce bias in the journal as a whole by encouraging response articles from different perspectives and by having special
issues with guest editors from other disciplines. We have also encouraged dissident reviewers to write response articles to pieces that they do not like.

As an editor-in-chief well known in my journal's field. I am faced with the temptation to publish my own articles. To date I have refrained, but on two occasions I have published my response to an article, because the response originated in a symposium for which the article was also written. Would the journal be better if I contributed to it more?

More difficult dilemmas arise when a manuscript from a member of the editorial review board is blind reviewed and receives two negatives. I have found no good way to say "no" to a member of the editorial -board. I have, however, learned from experience how not to do it. Last year, we sent a two-sentence form rejection letter to a distinguished member of our editorial board whose paper two other distinguished editors had turned down. The letter was short because the reviewers had had nothing positive to say about the paper. The paper's author was not pleased.
I have learned something else about truth-telling. During the summer, finding people to review manuscripts is virtually impossible. Reviewers travel, work on their own research, are difficult to locate, and seldom review a manuscript promptly. Last year, the managing editor, Al Gini, admitted what everyone knew. He announced that no manuscripts would be reviewed during the summer. Outraged authors called or wrote. Members of the editorial review board (the same people who are reluctant to review papers during the summer) complained. So, we have gone back to the old practice. This summer we will send out manuscripts for review, although we do not expect much in the way of response until September.

I have so far focused on problems that arise in editing an academic journal. This no doubt makes editing sound like an unpleasant chore. Actually, the excitement of publishing new material, the satisfactions of working with academics from many disciplines, and the chance of encouraging new research in a growing field far outweigh these difficulties.