Research Ethics & Consent
Archives of Business Research · Policies
Research Ethics & Consent
Ethical requirements for research involving human participants, organisations, and data.
Research published in Archives of Business Research must be conducted to high ethical standards. Although much business and management research is non-clinical, studies frequently involve human participants — through surveys, interviews, experiments, observation, or the use of personal or organisational data — and must therefore meet the requirements below.
Research involving human participants
| • | Research must comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and with all applicable national and institutional requirements. |
| • | Authors must obtain approval from a research ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB) where required, and state the approving body and reference number in the manuscript. If formal approval was not required, authors must explain why. |
| • | Informed consent must be obtained from participants (or their legal representatives), including consent to participate and, where applicable, consent to publish. |
Confidentiality and identifiable data
Authors must protect participant and organisational confidentiality. Individuals and organisations must not be identifiable in text, images, or supplementary material without explicit written consent. Personal data must be anonymised or pseudonymised wherever possible and handled in line with applicable data-protection law (see the Privacy Policy).
Research involving organisations and proprietary data
Where research uses confidential company data, authors must confirm they had the right to access and publish it and have obtained any necessary permissions from the organisations concerned.
Animals
In the rare cases involving animals, research must comply with relevant welfare regulations and institutional approval, which must be stated.
Declarations in the manuscript
Authors must include an Ethics Statement covering approval, consent, and confidentiality, or state clearly that these are not applicable and why. The journal may request copies of approval or consent documentation and may decline or retract work that does not meet these standards.
