A. Questions of Authorship and Acknowledgement

1. Mental retardation researchers and professionals should acknowledge all people who make substantial conceptual contributions to their research and to their copyrighted publications. Claims and ordering of authorship and acknowledgements should accurately reflect the contributions of all major participants in the research and writing process, including students.
2. Data and material taken verbatim from another person's published or unpublished written work must be explicitly identified and referenced to its author. Citations to ideas developed in the written work of others, even if not quoted verbatim, should not be knowingly omitted.

B. Authors, Editors and Reviewers have Interdependent Responsibilities in the Publication Process

1. Editors should continually review the fair application of standards without personal or ideological malice.
2. Editors should provide prompt decisions to authors of submitted manuscripts. They must monitor the work of associate editors or reviewers so that delays are few and reviews are conscientious.
3. An editor's commitment to publish an article is binding on the journal. Once accepted for publication, a manuscript should be published as expeditiously as possible.
4. Editors receiving reviews of manuscripts from persons who have previously reviewed those manuscripts for another journal should ordinarily seek additional reviews.
5. Submission of a manuscript to Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (IDD) clearly grants that journal first claim to publish. A paper submitted to one English language journal should not be submitted to another journal published in English until after an official decision has been received from the first journal. Of course, the article can be withdrawn from consideration to publish at any time.

C. Participation in Review Process

1. Mental retardation researchers and professionals should decline requests for reviews of work of others where strong conflicts of interest are involved, such as may occur when a person is asked to review work by colleagues for whom he or she feels an overriding sense of personal obligation, competition, or enmity that would preclude a fair evaluation, or when such requests cannot be f ulfilled on time.
2. Manuscripts sent for review should be read in their entirety and considered carefully and confidentially. Evaluations should be justified with explicit reasons.
3. Mental retardation researchers and professionals who are asked to review manuscripts and books they have previously reviewed should make this fact known to the editor requesting review.

D. The Responsibilities of Authors Who Are Researchers

1. Mental retardation researchers have a responsibility to minimize potential risks to research participants and to take all necessary steps to eliminate the possibility of harm to vulnerable populations.
2. Mental retardation researchers who publish their results or findings should record and preserve their data in a form that allows scrutiny and evaluation. Data should be retained for an appropriate length of time after publication so that it is available for inspection by collaborators or other qualified and interested researchers.

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