LAW & RELIGIONS
SEMI-ANNUAL MAGAZINE
Ethical Code
Based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors drafted by the (COPE), Committee on Publication Ethics - which regulate the behaviour of all the parties (the Editor, the Assessors and the Authors) involved in the process of publishing contributions in the Journal -, the Journal Law and Religions provides the following Code of Ethics.
The peer review procedure with an anonymous and double-blind system is adopted. The procedure is designed to ensure that the Evaluator never knows the identity of the Author and that the Author never knows the identity of the Evaluator.
Editor's responsibilities
Responsibilities: the Editor-in-Chief of a peer-reviewed journal is responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal should be published and, in addition, is responsible for everything that is published in the journal. In making these decisions, the Editor-in-Chief may be guided by any guidelines approved by the journal's Scientific Committee, as well as by regulations on libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism. The Editor-in-Chief, when necessary, may consult with reviewers to assess whether or not individual contributions should be published. He or she must prevent external factors from compromising the intellectual and ethical standards of the journal and must always be prepared to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when nece
Duties of the Editor
Fairness: the Editor must evaluate manuscripts solely for their content, regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the author(s); he or she will not divulge any information about a manuscript considered by anyone other than the authors, reviewers and potential reviewers, and, in some cases, members of the editorial board, as appropriate.
Confidentiality: the editor and his or her team must not disclose any information about a manuscript submitted to parties other than the author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher, as appropriate.
Disclosure, Conflicts of Interest, and Other Issues: The editor will be guided by the COPE Guidelines for Retraction of Articles when considering retraction and any corrections related to published articles.
Unpublished materials contained in a submitted manuscript must not be used directly or indirectly by the Editor in his own research, that of his collaborators, or that of third parties without the express written consent of the author. Confidential information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal benefit.
The Editor-in-Chief must ensure that publicity, reprinting, or other commercial income has no impact or influence on editorial decisions; he or she must ensure a fair and appropriate review process; he or she must avoid submitting manuscripts to reviewers who have conflicts of interest arising from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions related to the articles. The editor must ask all reviewers to disclose conflicts of interest to him or her confidentially, and be prepared, if he or she becomes aware of conflicts of interest after publication of an article, to publish corrections or even a retraction.
Involvement and cooperation in revisions: the editor must protect the integrity of the published documentation, publishing corrections, rectifications or retractions when necessary, and punish with expulsion (if the offence does not constitute a crime to be reported to the AG) reviewers and his other collaborators who have acted in bad faith, appropriating confidential information or ideas, projects, formulas, discoveries, contained in the articles submitted for review.
Reviewers' responsibilities
Promptness: any appointed reviewer who does not feel qualified to review the article submitted to him, or who knows that he cannot review it in a reasonably timely manner, must inform the Director immediately so that he can contact another reviewer.
Confidentiality: all work received for review must be treated as confidential documents; they may not be shown or discussed with others without expressis verbis authorisation from the Director.
Standard of objectivity: reviews must be conducted objectively; personal criticism of the author is unacceptable; reviewers must justify their criticism.
Acknowledgement of sources: reviewers must note whether there are any published works relevant to the article submitted to them that have not been cited by the authors. Any note by them that a topic has been previously reported must be accompanied by the relevant citation. The reviewer should also draw the editor's attention to any substantial similarities between the manuscript under review and any other published work of which they have personal knowledge.
Disclosure and Conflict of Interest:: confidential information, ideas, plans, formulae obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain. Reviewers must not accept the evaluation of work on topics where they have conflicts of interest arising from collaborations or other relationships with authors, companies or institutions related to the submission.
Responsibility of the author
Citation standard: authors reporting the results of their original research must present an accurate account of the work and an objective statement of its significance. The underlying data must be carefully illustrated in the manuscript. An article must contain sufficient detail and references to allow others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
Originality and plagiarism: authors must ensure that they have written entirely original works, formulae, designs, and accurately cite the works and publications of others from which they have been inspired or whose data, formulae, designs they have used.
Multiple, redundant or simultaneous publication: an author must not publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or book/conference proceedings aut similia. Parallel submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical editorial behaviour and is unacceptable.
Author of a manuscript: the actual 'author' should only be the one who had the fundamental idea, or did the research, or made an essential contribution to the work in some way; all those who made (only) significant contributions should be listed as co-authors. The author(s) should ensure that all those who meet the above requirements to be co-authors are included in the relevant list, and that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the article and accepted its submission for publication.
Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors must, when submitting a paper to the Editor, disclose, either in the paper itself or in an accompanying communication, which for good reason may remain confidential to the Editor alone, the existence of any political, religious, economic or other conflict of interest that may have influenced the results or their interpretation in the manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project must be disclosed.
Fundamental errors in published works: when an author discovers a significant error in an already published article of his or her own, he or she must promptly inform the Editor-in-Chief and work together to withdraw the article or publish a correction/correction/retraction in the first issue of the journal following the discovery.
Confirmation by the Editor
In the event of alleged or proven scientific misconduct, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, the Editor, in close cooperation with his team, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an error or, in the most serious cases, the complete retraction of the work concerned.
