Publication Ethics

Table of Content

1. Introduction
2. Duties of Editors
3. Duties of Reviewers
4. Duties of Authors
5. Allegations of Research Misconduct
6. Complaints and Appeals
7. Intellectual Property (Copyright Policy)
8. Ethical Guideline
9. Plagiarism Policy
10. Retraction and Withdrawal Policy
11. Discussions and corrections after publication
12. Errata and Corrigenda
13. Advertising Policy

Introduction

This statement clarifies ethical behavior of all parties involved in the act of publishing an article in Law And Justice, including the authors, the editors, the peer-reviewers and the publisher.

This statement is based on COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

A. Ethical Guidelines for Journal Publication

Law And Justice publishes articles in Legal Studies

The publication of an article in a peer-reviewed Law And Justice is an essential building block in the development of a coherent and respected network of knowledge. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behavior for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the authors, the journal editors, the peer reviewers, the publisher and the society. 

We are committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions.

B. Duties of authors

1. Reporting standards

Authors of reports of original research shouldpresent an accurate account of the workperformed as well as an objective discussion ofits significance. Underlying data should berepresented accurately in the paper. A papershould contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Reviewand professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial 'opinion' works should be clearly identified as such.

2. Data access and retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data inconnection with a paper for editorial review, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

3. Originality and plagiarism

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism takes many forms, from 'passing off' another's paper as the author's own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

4. Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. In general, an author should not submit for consideration in another journal apreviously published paper.

5. Acknowledgement of sources

Proper acknowledgment of the work of othersmust always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential indetermining the nature of the reported work. Information obtained privately, as inconversation, corres-pondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source. Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not beused without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

6. Authorship of the paper

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as coauthors. Where there are others who have participated in certain substantive aspects of the research project, they should be acknowledged or listed as contributors. The corresponding author should ensure that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the paper and have agreed to its submission for publication.

7. Hazards on human subjects

If the work involves chemicals, procedures or equipment that have any unusual hazards inherent in their use, the author must clearly identify these in the manuscript. If the work involves the use of animal or human subjects, the author should ensure that the manuscript contains a statement that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines and that the appropriate institutional committee(s) has approved them. Authors should include a statement in the manuscript that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with human subjects. The privacy rights of human subjects must always be observed.

8. Disclosure and conflicts of interest

All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed. Examples of potential conflicts of interest which should be disclosed include employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants orother funding. Potential conflicts of interest should be disclosed at the earliest stage possible.

9. Fundamental errors in publishedworks

When an author discovers a significant error orinaccuracy in his/her own published work, it isthe author's obligation to promptly notify thejournal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper. If the editor or the publisher learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.

C. Duties of editors

1. Publication decisions

 The editor of a peer-reviewed journal isresponsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published, often working in conjunction with the relevant society (for society-owned or sponsoredjournals). The validation of the work in questionand its importance to researchers and readers must always drive such decisions. The editormay be guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements as shall then be in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The editor may confer with other editors or reviewers (or society officers) in making this decision.

2. Fair play

An editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

3. Confidentiality

The editor and any editorial staff must notdisclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher, as appropriate.

4. Disclosure and conflicts of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's own research without the express written consent ofthe author. Privileged information or idea sobtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Editors should recuse themselves (i.e. should aska co-editor, associate editor or other member of the editorial board instead to review andconsider) from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or (possibly) institutions connected to the papers. Editors should require all contributors to disclose relevant competing interests and publish corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication. If needed, other appropriate action should be taken, such as the publication of a retraction or expression of concern. It should be ensured that the peer-review process for sponsored supplements is the same as that used for the main journal. Items in sponsored supplements should be accepted solely on the basis of academic merit and interest to readers and not be influenced by commercial considerations. Non peer reviewed sections of their journal should beclearly identified.

D. Duties of Reviewers

1. Contribution to editorial decisions

Peer review assists the editor in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the author may also assist the author in improving the paper. Peer review is an essential component of formal scholarly communication, and lies at the heart of the scientific method.

2. Promptness

Any selected referee who feels unqualified toreview the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process.

3. Confidentiality

Any manuscripts received for review must betreated as confidential documents. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except asauthorized by the editor.

4. Standards of objectivity

Reviews should be conducted objectively. Personal criticism of the author is inappropriate. Referees should express their views clearly with supporting arguments.

5. Acknowledgement of sources

Reviewers should identify relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors. Any statement that an observation, derivation, or argument had been previously reported should be accompanied by the relevant citation. Are viewer should also call to the editor's attentionany substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

6. Disclosure and conflict of interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer's own research without the express written consent ofthe author. Privileged information or idea sobtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected tothe papers.

E. Allegations of Research Misconduct

1. Plagiarism

Plagiarism includes, but is not limited to:

• Directly copying text from other sources without attribution
• Copying ideas, images, or data from other sources without attribution
• Reusing text from your own previous publications without attribution or agreement of the editor
• Exception: Reusing text from the Methods section in the author’s previous publications, with attribution to the source, is acceptable.
• Using an idea from another source with slightly modified language without attribution.

If plagiarism is detected during the peer review process, the manuscript may be rejected. If plagiarism is detected after publication, we may issue a correction or retract the paper as appropriate.

2. Data fabrication 

This concerns the making up of research findings.

• Suspected fabricated data in a submitted manuscript
• Suspected fabricated data in a published manuscript

3. Data falsification 

Manipulating research data with the intention of giving a false impression. This includes manipulating images (e.g., micrographs, gels, radiological images), removing outliers or “inconvenient” results, changing, adding or omitting data points, etc.

4. Duplicate submissions

Duplicate submission is a situation whereby an author submits the same or similar manuscripts to two different journals at the same time, either within Academic Journals or any other publisher. This includes the submission of manuscripts derived from the same data in such a manner that there are no substantial differences in the manuscripts. Duplicate submission also includes the submission of the same/similar manuscript in different languages to different journals.

5. Authorship Issues

Clear policies (that allow for transparency around who contributed to the work and in what capacity) should be in place for requirements for authorship and contributorship, as well as processes for managing potential disputes.

6. Citation Manipulation

Citation Manipulation includes excessive citations in the submitted manuscript that do not contribute to the scholarly content of the article and have been included solely for the purpose of increasing citations to a given author’s work or to articles published in a particular journal. This leads to misrepresenting the importance of the specific work and journal in which it appears and is thus a form of scientific misconduct.

7. Suspected Manipulation of Peer Review/Bias of Peer Reviews

LAJ selects the reviewers on any manuscript with due care so as to avoid any conflict of interest between the reviewers and the authors. Our policy is compliant with COPE Guidelines on peer review.

F. Complaints and Appeals

For handling complaints concerning the journal, its editorial staff, editorial board, or its publisher, LAJ shall have a well outlined system. Regarding the complaint situation, the complaints will be explained to respectable people. Any aspect of the journal business process might be the subject of a complaint, including the editing process, unethical editors/reviewers, peer review manipulation, and so on. According to COPE standards, the complaints will be addressed. For this reason, LAJ has legal experts in the field of Intellectual Property rights as the Ethics Advisory Board.

G. Intellectual Property (Copyright Policy)

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

LAW AND JUSTICE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

H. Ethical Guideline

1. Ethical Oversight

According to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), ethical oversight should include but is not limited to, policies on consent to publication, publication on vulnerable populations, ethical conduct of research using animals, ethical conduct of research using human subjects, handling confidential data and ethical business/marketing practices. The LAJ is committed to considering appeals concerning our authors' non-observance of ethical principles.

2. Research Involving Human Subjects

When reporting studies that involve human participants, authors should include a statement that the studies have been approved by the appropriate institutional and/or national research ethics committee and have been performed in accordance with the ethical standards as laid down in the 1975 Declaration of Helsinki (https://www.wma.net/what-we-do/medical-ethics/declaration-of-helsinki/), revised in 2013, and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

If doubt exists whether the research was conducted in accordance with the 1975 Helsinki Declaration or comparable standards, the authors must explain the reasons for their approach and demonstrate that the independent ethics committee or institutional review board explicitly approved the doubtful aspects of the study. At a minimum, a statement including the project identification code, date of approval, and name of the ethics committee or institutional review board should be stated in Section ‘Ethical Approval’ of the article.

An example of an ethical statement: "All subjects gave their informed consent for inclusion before participating in the study. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, and the protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of XXX (Project identification code)."

3. Use of Animals in Research

The welfare of animals used for research must be respected. When reporting experiments on animals, authors should indicate whether the international, national, and/or institutional guidelines for the care and use of animals have been followed and that the studies have been approved by a research ethics committee at the institution or practice at which the studies were conducted (where such a committee exists).

The LAJ endorses the ARRIVE guidelines (https://arriveguidelines.org/arrive-guidelines) for reporting experiments using live animals. Authors and reviewers can use the ARRIVE guidelines as a checklist, which can be found at: https://arriveguidelines.org/resources/author-checklists.

4. Research Involving Cell Lines

Methods sections for submissions reporting on research with cell lines should state the origin of any cell lines. For established cell lines, the provenance should be stated, and references must also be given to either a published paper or a commercial source. If previously unpublished de novo cell lines were used, including those gifted from another laboratory, details of institutional review board or ethics committee approval must be given, and confirmation of written informed consent must be provided if the line is of human origin.

Example of an ethical statement: "The HCT116 cell line was obtained from XXX. The MLH1+ cell line was provided by XXX, Ltd. The DLD-1 cell line was obtained from Dr. XXX. The DR-GFP and SA-GFP reporter plasmids were obtained from Dr. XXX, and the Rad51K133A expression vector was obtained from Dr. XXX."

5. Research Involving Plants

Experimental research on plants (either cultivated or wild), including a collection of plant material, must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines. We recommend that authors comply with the CBD (https://www.cbd.int/convention/) and the CITES (https://cites.org/eng).

For each submitted manuscript supporting genetic information and origin must be provided. For research manuscripts involving rare and non-model plants (other than, e.g., Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana benthamiana, Oriza sativa, or many other typical model plants), voucher specimens must be deposited in an accessible herbarium or museum. Vouchers may be requested for review by future investigators to verify the identity of the material used in the study (especially if taxonomic rearrangements occur in the future). They should include details of the populations sampled on the site of collection (GPS coordinates), date of collection, and document the part(s) used in the study where appropriate. For rare, threatened, or endangered species, this can be waived, but it is necessary for the author to describe this in the cover letter.

Example of an ethical statement: "Torenia fournieri plants were used in this study. White-flowered Crown White (CrW) and violet-flowered Crown Violet (CrV) cultivars selected from ‘Crown Mix’ (XXX Company, City, Country) were kindly provided by Dr. XXX (XXX Institute, City, Country)."

I. Plagiarism Policy

LAJ (Journal Law and Justice) apply Zero tolerance towards plagiarism and therefore establishes the following policy stating specific actions (penalties) when plagiarism is identified in an article that is submitted for publication in LAJ.

Plagiarism involves the "use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work."

Papers must be original, unpublished, and not pending publication elsewhere. Any material taken verbatim from another source needs to be clearly identified as different from the present original text by (1) indentation, (2) use of quotation marks, and (3) identification of the source.

We use TURNITIN to evaluate the similarity index and then the editor decides the case of possible plagiarism (Similarity report will be provided to the author). The Editorial Board has passed the following actions:

• Similarity Index above 40%: Article Rejected (due to poor citation and/or poor paraphrasing, article outright rejected, NO RESUBMISSION accepted).
• Similarity Index (15-40%): Send to the author for improvement (provide correct citations to all places of similarity and do good paraphrasing even if the citation is provided).
• Similarity index Less than 15%:  Accepted or citation improvement may be required (proper citations must be provided to all outsourced texts).

In cases 2 and 3, the authors should revise the article carefully, add required citations, and do good paraphrasing to outsourced text. And resubmit the article with a new Turnitin report showing NO PLAGIARISM and similarity of less than 15%.

J. Retraction and Withdrawal Policy

1. Retraction

The papers published in the LAJ (Journal Law and Justice) will be considered to retract in the publication if:

• They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
• The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing and permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
• It constitutes plagiarism.
• It reports unethical research.

The mechanism of retraction follows the Retraction Guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) which can be accessed at https://publicationethics.org. 

LAJ adopts the following retraction process:

1. An article requiring potential retraction is brought to the attention of the journal editor.
2. The journal editor should follow the step-by-step guidelines according to the COPE flowcharts (including evaluating a response from the author of the article in question).
3. The final decision as to whether to retract is then communicated to the author and, if necessary, any other relevant bodies, such as the author's institution on occasion.
4. The retraction statement is then posted online and published in the next available issue of the journal (see below for more details of this step). 

Note that if authors retain the copyright for an article this does not mean they automatically have the right to retract it after publication. The integrity of the published scientific record is of paramount importance and COPE’s Retraction Guidelines still apply in such cases.

2. Withdrawal

The author is not allowed to withdraw submitted manuscripts after preliminarily review because the withdrawal is a waste of valuable resources that editors and referees spent a great deal of time processing submitted manuscript, money, and works invested by the publisher. 

LAJ has a policy regarding withdrawal as follows:

• If the author requests the withdrawal of his/her manuscript when the manuscript is still in the peer-reviewing process, the author will be punished by paying $200 USD per manuscript.
• If the withdrawal of the manuscript after the manuscript is accepted for publication; the author will be punished by paying $300 USD per manuscript.
• If the author doesn't agree to pay the penalty, the author and his/her affiliation will be blacklisted for publication in this journal (3 years).
• If the author request to withdraw a manuscript, an official letter signed by the corresponding author and agency leader must be sent to the Editor-in-Chief.

K. Discussions and corrections after publication

Reader feedback and corrections on previously published articles are appreciated by LAJ. A reader may send an email to the editor-in-chief with comments and corrections on an article that has already been published. If accepted, the comments and revisions will appear as a Letter to the Editor in the subsequent edition (by the Editor in Chief). Respected writers may contact the editor in chief to reply to suggestions from readers and revisions. The answer may be printed as a Response to a Letter to the Editor, if appropriate.

L. Errata and Corrigenda

1. Changes/additions to accepted articles

All content of published articles is subject to the editorial review process, organized by and under the auspices of the editor. Should the authors wish to add to their article after acceptance, they must submit a request to the editor, and the new content will be reviewed.

• If the new material is added to the accepted article, it must be submitted for peer review as a new manuscript, referring back to the original;
• If the new material should replace the original content of the accepted article, the editor may consider the publication of an erratum or a corrigendum.

2. Erratum

An erratum is a correction of errors introduced to the article by the publisher.

All publisher-introduced changes are highlighted to the author at the proof stage, and any errors are ideally identified by the author and corrected by the publisher before final publication.

3. Corrigendum

A corrigendum refers to a change to the article that the author wishes to publish at any time after acceptance. Authors should contact the journal editor, who will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action.

M. Advertising Policy

1. LAJ sets high ethical standards in all its activities and, above all, defends the right to editorial independence. It does not allow advertising or sponsorship to influence the decisions made on editorial content.
2. Readers understand that advertising is different from editorial material. They know that the claims made in advertising are not endorsed by LAJ.
3. LAJ will carry advertisements that are legal and decent and conform to current recommendations and guidelines.
4. Decisions on the positioning of advertisements are made independently of decisions made in the editorial department on the content of a specific issue.
5. Editorial material will not be influenced by advertising. LAJ does not publish material to accompany advertising and does not sell advertising in relation to particular articles.
6. All decisions are at the discretion of the editor. If commercial clients adhere to these guidelines then their advertisement or sponsorship is likely to be accepted. Occasionally decisions may take time.

Editor in Chief

 

§ Note

The submission must not have been previously published, nor should it be under consideration for publication else where. We also have a strict policy against plagiarism. The plagiarism is checked through two methods: reviewer check and plagiarism prevention tool.

Source

Recommended by Elsevier and COPE's BestPractice Guidelines for Journal Editors