Journal of Advertising Research Quality and Ethics Guidelines

As the premier journal devoted to the development of advertising theory and its relationship to practice, the Journal of Advertising is committed to the highest ethical standards. All research published in the Journal of Advertising must have been conducted according to international and local guidelines ensuring ethically conducted research, as stated in the Taylor & Francis Editorial Policies (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/editorial-policies/). In addition to the general editorial policies, the following Research Ethics Guidelines are designed to provide more specific and practical guidelines for the ethical conduct of all researchers contributing to the Journal of Advertising and to maintain rigorous research standards.

Ethics Considerations

Research that involves human subjects or online user data (e.g., network traffic, passwords, social network information) should adhere to community norms. Any work that raises potential ethics considerations should indicate this on the submission form. The basic principles of ethical research are outlined in the Belmont Report: (1) respect for persons (which may involve obtaining consent); (2) beneficence (a careful consideration of risks and benefits); and (3) justice (ensuring that parts of the population that bear the risks of the research also are poised to obtain some benefit from it). Authors should further consult Taylor & Francis policies on ethical principles at https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/editorial-policies/ and https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/editorial-policies/research-ethics-guidelines-for-arts-humanities-and-social-sciences-journals/.

Research involving human subjects must be approved by the researchers’ respective Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) before the research takes place. Authors should indicate on the submission form whether the work involves human subjects. If so, the authors must indicate whether an IRB protocol has been approved for the research or whether the research has been determined to be exempt (self-determination or IRB determination). We expect that any research follows the practices and procedures of the institution(s) where the work is being carried out; for example, some universities require separate approval for the use of campus data. We expect researchers to abide by these protocols.

If the submission describes research involving human subjects and none of the authors are at an institution with an IRB (or equivalent), the authors are nonetheless expected to follow a research protocol that adheres to the ethical principles of Taylor & Francis. In such cases, the authors must use the Ethics section of their appendix to explain how their research protocol satisfies the principles of ethical research.

Some research does not involve human subjects, yet raises questions of ethics nonetheless, which may be wide-ranging and not necessarily limited to direct effects. We encourage authors to be mindful of the ethics of their research; these considerations are often not clearcut but warrant thoughtful consideration.

Ethics Statements

Discussions of these issues should be placed in the “Ethics” appendix section mentioned above or in the main body of the paper where appropriate. It is also advised that the author places a short ethics statement at the end of the manuscript, summarizing the information as above: stating that IRB approval was received, name of institution, and IRB number, as well as indicating informed consent from participants (particularly relevant for interview data). If the author resides in a country where IRB approval is not required, the manuscript should state such.

Ethics Guidance on the Use of AI

LLMs and AI tools do not meet the criteria for authorship and so cannot be listed as an author. Authors are responsible for the originality, integrity, and validity of the content of their submissions and need to be able to enter into an author publishing agreement. Use of such tools in the writing of an article must be done responsibly and transparently in accordance with publishing ethics guidelines. Please see Taylor & Francis’s guidelines on ‘Defining authorship in a research paper’ (https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/editorial-policies/defining-authorship-research-paper/) for more information.

Submission and Storage of Supplemental Material

For initial manuscript submissions, the data and study materials used in the research do not need to be made accessible to the editor-in-chief or the review team. However, the editor may request these data and study materials at any time. When there is a request, authors must provide them promptly using a repository associated with an established third-party organization. The Journal of Advertising requests using one of the following: Open Science Framework, Harvard Dataverse, Qualitative Data Repository, or ResearchBox. If a different third-party, public repository is used, justification must be communicated to the editor. Storage on private directories such as Google Drive or Dropbox will not be accepted. Authors of manuscripts that report data-dependent results are encouraged to make available, upon request, the minimal dataset for seven years after the date of publication for the benefit of researchers interested in replicating or extending these results.

Open Science Principles

In addition to the ethics guidelines applied to all empirical research, the Journal of Advertising advocates adopting Open Science principles. In particular:

• Authors should consider pre-registering their research in an Open Science repository. While this is not mandatory, it is recommended by the Journal of Advertising for both quantitative and qualitative research designs, and authors are encouraged to share an anonymized version of the pre-registration for peer review.

• Authors should make the details of their research design and analysis available for peer review and are encouraged to make this information public in an Open Science repository (and link to it in the manuscript) once the article is accepted. For quantitative research designs, this may mean details on how the data were collected so that others can replicate and build on their work (e.g., the items used in a survey, stimuli for an experiment, the codebook for a content analysis) and the replication code for the analysis (e.g., the syntax used to do the analysis and the output). The same is valid for qualitative research designs (e.g., by publishing the interview guide, an in-depth description of the analysis, etc.).

• Using open-source software or packages for data analysis is becoming more frequent. In these cases, authors should specify libraries and versions in replication code published in an Open Science repository (anonymous at the review stage) and are encouraged to make the replication code public (and link to it in the manuscript) once the article is accepted.

• Source data should adhere to the FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets) principles, including making it publicly available when possible. In some cases, this may mean that a minimized and/or anonymized dataset might be shared. Data that are proprietary or may be under nondisclosure agreements do not need to be made public but must be disclosed to reviewers during the review process when requested and also be available for replication purposes at all times.

• Data privacy and sharing data: Whenever possible, data should be reported in aggregate to protect the privacy of participants in any research design. If individual user-level data are necessary, they should be anonymized, with the exception of public figures.

Figure 1 provides a broad overview of how scholars should conduct empirical research to foster open science (adapted from van Atteveldt et al., 2019).

Figure 1. Principles for the conduct of research.

Along with the Journal of Advertising Research Quality and Ethics Guidelines, we have also developed and posted Guidelines on Methodological Reporting for authors. Both guidelines are in effect and can be found on the Journal of Advertising website at https://files.taylorandfrancis.com/ujoa-ethical-standards.pdf. We hope that contributing authors and reviewers will find these guidelines helpful and actively integrate them into their research project planning, data collection and analysis processes, and manuscript writing.

Jisu Huh
Editor-in-Chief

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the committee of the Journal of Advertising’s associate editors, including (alphabetically) Theo Araujo, Jameson Hayes, Michelle Nelson, Cristel Russell, Wanhsiu Tsai, and Vijay Viswanathan (chair), who developed the initial version of the Journal of Advertising Research Quality and Ethics Guidelines. We also wish to thank the other associate editors and editorial review board members who offered helpful suggestions and constructive feedback as well as the Taylor & Francis team who provided valuable support.