The ethics of being an editor–researcher

Although only a few months old at press time, ChatGPT has already established itself as one of the biggest disruptors of historical conceptions of authorship, reality and trust. The research community will no doubt face increasing challenges as it attempts to deal with peer review, conflicts-of-interest and publishing ethics. Readers may know that the International Journal of Community Music is a Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) member. COPE establishes ethical guidelines for the academic publishing. No doubt these will evolve in the face of emerging artificial intelligence technology. The existing guidelines are helpful but still leave many issues unaddressed, such as what researchers should do when it comes to publishing in a journal they edit. In addition to Kathleen Turner’s autoethnographic reflective essay about the challenges arising from the COVID-19 crisis on a university-based community music training programme and Anna McMichael’s study of composer/musicians involved with the annual classical Tyalgum Music Festival in regional Australia, Issue 16:1 features three articles authored or co-authored by the journal’s editors, who devised an in-house system to ensure the integrity of the double-blind peer review system. The issue concludes with a dedication to Janice Waldron (1957–2022), who passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in November 2022.