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I recently reviewed a paper (general applied mathematics context). During the review, I realized that the fairly general ideas introduced in the paper can potentially be applied to a specific problem in a similar context. The authors did not mention this application in their paper, so I suggested to add a short comment about it in my review.

I later started thinking about the application in more detail and tried out some things, which actually seem to work quite well for this application. Now, the paper is still in the review process and might take some time until it gets published. What is the proper way how to proceed here in order to use the ideas and results which I in my exclusive position as a reviewer saw? How can I refer to the paper that is still under review? How can I best discuss the ideas with my co-workers (and potential co-authors) without disclosing that I reviewed the paper?

The paper under review is not available online on any preprint servers such as arXiv etc

user3825755
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    I think you should wait until it will be published. – Nikey Mike Jul 01 '16 at 09:39
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    Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23354/a-manuscript-i-refereed-gave-me-an-idea-for-a-paper-not-sure-how-to-proceed The context is slightly different, but the advice is much the same. – zibadawa timmy Jul 01 '16 at 13:25
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    The paper doesn't exist for you outside of the realm of review duties. You need to treat it as if you do not know about it. Until publication. – Captain Emacs Jul 01 '16 at 16:13
  • @CaptainEmacs What if the paper is on arXiv? –  Jul 01 '16 at 16:46
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    @NajibIdrissi This is surely no problem if the paper is on arXiv, which, unfortunately is not the case here – user3825755 Jul 01 '16 at 16:54
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    Is there a way you could have found out about the existence of the paper, apart from having reviewed it? For example, have the authors given a talk about it at a conference (or are they scheduled to give a talk at some future conference)? If so, you could write to them saying that you're interested in the topic of their talk, and asking whether they have a preprint that they could send you. If they send you a preprint, then you could legitimately use it for your own work (and cite it, and thank them in your paper for providing the preprint). – Andreas Blass Jul 01 '16 at 18:51
  • @AndreasBlass good point, I will check that, but it is very unlikely that this was the case at any conferences I actually attended – user3825755 Jul 04 '16 at 15:49
  • In any case, nothing stops you from writing up a paper and wait until the other is out. Maybe giving them the hint about your idea was ill conceived, as you may find a surrise in the published version. – Marco Stamazza Sep 15 '18 at 12:46

2 Answers2

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You can't ethically do anything based on ideas from this paper until it is made public (by the authors as a preprint, or by the publisher). In particular, before that point you can't refer to the paper, you can't use the ideas without referring to it, you can't publish or otherwise disseminate results based on it, and you can't discuss it with other people, including your collaborators. It can be really frustrating to know something important and be unable to tell anyone else for the time being, but there's no way around it ethically.

The reason is that submitting a paper for publication is not considered to release it for other use or dissemination until it is actually published. The people involved in processing and evaluating it (most notably the editors and reviewers) have an ethical obligation to keep all information about the submission strictly confidential and not to use it to gain any personal advantage. Once it is published of course it can be treated the same as any other paper, and in the meantime the authors can choose to make information publicly available via preprints or talks (in which case others can follow up on this information as appropriate), but nobody else is authorized to release any information before publication beyond what the authors have chosen to share, or to use it for any purpose other than reviewing the paper. Otherwise it has the same ethical status as using material you stole off the authors' desks.

There's no reason why the research community has to work this way in principle, but it's the system that has evolved over time. (Note that as recently as the 1930's, famous physicists were not all in agreement as to how peer review should work.) It's possible that in the future we will move to systems such as submitting for publication only after releasing a preprint. That seems to be the trend in some fields, but we haven't yet made a full transition if we ever will, and the community's ethical principles still offer protection to authors who choose not to distribute their paper before publication.

Nobody signs a non-disclosure agreement when reviewing a paper, but the ethical principles are well established. Deliberately violating them would be a serious form of misconduct, which could easily be career-ending if it was more than a minor or technical violation.

Pete L. Clark asks in the comments whether referees are allowed to prepare follow-up papers, as long as they don't distribute them before the original paper becomes public. I.e., does the "you can't ethically do anything based on ideas from this paper" really mean you can't do anything, or just that you can't disseminate anything yet? (Let's assume it's a single-authored paper that is not discussed with anyone else in advance.) My interpretation is that nobody can stop you from thinking a little, and you may not even be able to stop yourself, but actively working on and writing a paper of your own would be abusing your position as referee. There probably isn't a consensus as to exactly where the line is for what's strictly forbidden, but either side of the line could still look terrible. If you want to publish work you began thinking about as a referee, I'd strongly recommend against doing it so quickly that's it clear you had to have known about the original paper in advance.

Anonymous Mathematician
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    To clarify, by "do anything", do you mean really mean that or do you mean "do anything public"? For instance, suppose the OP gets to work writing a substantial paper using these ideas. One day google scholar alerts him to the online publication of the paper whose ideas he's using, and two days later his followup preprint appears on the arxiv. Is that okay? – Pete L. Clark Jul 01 '16 at 16:02
  • I was just about to ask what @PeteL.Clark wrote – user3825755 Jul 01 '16 at 16:07
  • @PeteL.Clark This is a very questionable operation from the point of ethics. Plus, it's risky. What if the result never sees the light of day (could always happen)? Tread carefully. – Captain Emacs Jul 01 '16 at 16:15
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    @Captain: Yes, it's questionable, which is why I asked a question. I'm not sure what you mean by "Tread carefully." How much more carefully can one tread than by inquiring about the ethics of a hypothetical activity? – Pete L. Clark Jul 01 '16 at 19:08
  • @PeteL.Clark A difficult call. Hypothetically, one should wait a "reasonable amount of time" before making your own work public. But who knows how much is reasonable! I've been known to respond in as little as 30 minutes to papers just sent to me, but typically one would expect days or even weeks before hearing meaningful feedback from a colleague. I would say "wait the same amount of time after it's made public that it took you to get your work done", thus making your advantage more or less moot. – zibadawa timmy Jul 01 '16 at 19:32
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    @PeteL.Clark Frankly, I think the only clean answer is to pretend the submitted paper does not exist (unless, of course, it's on arXiv). Anything that takes advantage of your privileged position as a reviewer, I would consider quite questionable; it could be considered a type of "insider trading". – Captain Emacs Jul 02 '16 at 00:10
  • I find a lot of this answer and comments sort of baffling. Could you explain why it is unethical to refer to someones research before it is public, or publish things based on what they have done (with appropriate references)? For me, this seems like some sort of strange ownership thing, like the people who wrote the paper own the ideas, which does not seem right to me. –  Jul 02 '16 at 15:50
  • @PaulPlummer: The idea is that when you review a submission to a journal, you are agreeing to keep it confidential and use the paper only for that purpose. This is a societal convention, rather than a necessary truth, but it's the way journals have evolved to work. I've added some more detail in the answer. – Anonymous Mathematician Jul 02 '16 at 20:12
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One thing you absolutely could do before publication, and given your interest, you probably should, is investigate the possibility of contacting the authors, and ask if they'd be interested in collaborating on enlarging upon their work in the direction of your comment.

If they say yes, then you have their go-ahead to build on their work, get to start work straight away (though you can't publish before them, of course), get the advantage of their experience in the area, and so on - it's all upsides.

If they say no, then you're no worse off: you still have to wait until it's published.

Pants
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Dewi Morgan
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    Although I personally feel this is reasonable, I'm not sure it's universally agreed upon that the referee can ethically compromise their own confidentiality in this way. The OP might want to contact the editor to get their opinion on this. – Pete L. Clark Jul 01 '16 at 19:07
  • Very good call. I suppose this could matter somewhat less if the authors are well-known for their work in this area already, such that contacting them about that area might not be an anonymity violation, but even then is still something to consider doing anyway, just for safety and openness. – Dewi Morgan Jul 01 '16 at 19:16