Conflicts of interest and disclosure in the age of TEFL online
Given what an incestuous little industry we work in, I’m quite surprised that I rarely if ever read disclosure of links to authors in TEFL reviews. Just to start, with there must be loads of reviewers and writers who:
- Work for the same chain
- Work in a school that the other worked in at another time
- Work or worked for the same publisher
- Spoke at a conference organised by the other
- Have corresponded
- Were involved in pre-publication reviewing of the other’s work
- Edited each other
- Belong to the same organisation
- Are regularly involved in the same publications, e.g. are both peer reviewers for the same journal
- Have previously written or spoken about ideas that support or attack the other’s
- Previously reviewed a book by the other
- Have attended training by the other
- Attended the same course
- Are hoping to do one of the above in the future
With the exception of the last one, I think you could easily argue that they should be at least briefly mentioned in TEFL reviews, and can’t really think of any arguments against. In the last five or so years, however, there are chances that writers and reviewers have contact in ways that are possibly too trivial to be worth mentioning, e.g.
- Subscribing to someone’s blog and/ or Twitter feed
- Commenting on someone’s blog
- Regularly reading someone’s blog
Then there is the grey area:
- Regularly commenting on someone’s blog
- Guest pieces on the other person’s blog
- Membership of the same online group(s)
- Replying to each other’s tweets
- LinkedIn contacts
- Facebook friends
- Email communication that started as one of the above
What do you think? Worth mentioning? Any of the above actually black or white rather than grey? Missed any?
(Almost) full disclosure – this is a topic I do have a personal and pressing interest in…
