I am an editor for a lousy paper and I found a better algorithm than theirs. Must I share it with them?
I am handling a paper as an associate editor that proposed an algorithm that I find to be weak. In fact, I was able to show that a very simple, brute-force approach actually has a better running time than their algorithm. Therefore, I will recommend rejecting this paper. Do I have an obligation to share my proof that the brute-force running time is better? I want the higher-level editors to have confidence in the rejection, but it also occurs to me that I might be able to improve my own result and publish it independently. Is this a violation of ethics?
UPDATE: Well this certainly took off! I would like to add the following:
The overwhelming consensus is that it would be unethical for me to "scoop" the other authors, so I will not do that. The advice from all is greatly appreciated.
The journal is the top in its field, so we have to be extremely selective. The problem proposed is fairly interesting, but overall the paper does not meet our threshold.
When I say that brute force is better than their method, I mean it in a provable, big O sense.
The authors' proposed scheme is not only inefficient, it is written in a very confusing way. In fact, I asked them to compare their approach to brute-force as a way of helping them clarify their argument, and they did a bad job of it, which is what led me to look into it in the first place.
The fact that brute force performs better than their scheme is not totally trivial because it relies on a combinatorial argument that is not amazing, but not completely obvious either.
I will share my proof with the Editor in chief, but I have decided not to give it to the authors; I will consider publishing independently in the future if their work ever appears elsewhere.
Their paper is not on arXiv or any other website.
3 Answers
I think you are treading on thin ice, ethically speaking. Obviously you, as an editor, have no obligation to help the authors in any specific way, and you are free to tell them about your improvement or not, but rejecting their paper, taking the idea/problem, applying a different method to its resolution, and then publishing this under your own name seems problematic.
As an editor, you are usually expected to treat the papers you are handling as privileged information, and you are specifically expected to not use your knowledge of rejected papers to scoop the authors - which is exactly what you plan to do. Say you reject the paper with comments along the line "important problem, solution is too simplistic". The authors now go back to the drawing board, come up with a solution similar to what you had in mind, and get their paper accepted. If you publish your idea first they obviously can't do this anymore - you have effectively made use of knowledge you learned as an editor to pull the rug from under the people who initially thought of the research project, even if they did not do a great job with the first submission.
I understand that it sucks that if you told them about your idea you would be giving away information that, in different circumstances, may be sufficient for co-authorship. However, I would argue, as a reviewer / editor we sign up for helping the authors "for free" to some extent (that is, without expecting recognition).
If you really don't want to tell the authors about your idea your best hope is that the authors get their work accepted somewhere else. In that case you are free to write your follow-up paper and cite the original paper.
If the paper is overall lousy then simply reject it. I'm sure the reviewers would give you plenty of reasons for this.
However, if all it is, is a weak algorithm but otherwise well written, then it might still be worthy of publication (depends on the journal). Once published, you can then publish your own work and cite the paper. After all, your algorithm is indeed inspired by theirs.
Also, how sure are you that your algorithm is "better"? Always better? 90% of the time better? On CPUs? What about GPUs? How does it scale?
As an example, think about all the sorting algorithms out there. There is not a best algorithm. Depending on the dataset being sorted, any number of algorithms could give the best result.
Does running time actually matter?
It's a program for a paper, not something to be distributed and run commercially on many machines. Perhaps they coded it the way they did because that algorithm is more readable and understandable than a brute force approach.
For example, if something in my paper required me to do something simple like add up the numbers from 1 to n, we all know the sum is equal to n(n+1)/2, but having a loop that goes from 1 to n and adds them together is simpler to read.
Assuming this is the only 'lousy' thing in the paper that you take issue with, I don't see it as a reason to reject. If you could come up with a brute force approach that quickly, surely they could as well. Perhaps ask them why they chose that algorithm, or ask a senior editor at your paper for a second opinion, not random strangers on the internet.
As far as using the algorithm you wrote yourself goes, the other answers have adequately stated that that would be incredibly unethical.
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