Publication ethics and malpractice

Policy facts

These facts come from the journal’s settings in the portal, so they always describe how the journal actually works.

COPE

The journal follows the Core Practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and uses COPE’s flowcharts when a concern arises.

This page sets out the journal’s standards on authorship, conflicts of interest, research involving people, sources and data, intellectual property and the use of AI tools, and explains how the journal deals with allegations of misconduct and with corrections and retractions. How manuscripts are reviewed is explained in the Peer review policy, how to appeal or complain on the Complaints and appeals page, and how the journal is owned and run on the About page.

Duties of editors

The editors judge every manuscript on its merits, without regard to the authors’ institution, seniority, nationality, religion, gender or any other personal characteristic, and they give reasons for their decisions. They keep manuscripts confidential, they do not use unpublished material for their own work, and they deal promptly and fairly with any concern raised about a paper, whether before or after publication.

Authorship

Everyone listed as an author must have contributed to the work and agreed to its submission. Each co-author confirms their authorship by email. Changes to the author list after submission need a reason and the agreement of every author.

An author is someone who contributed substantially to the idea, the research or the analysis; wrote the paper or revised it critically; approved the final version; and accepts responsibility for the work as a whole. People who helped in other ways are thanked in the acknowledgements. The authors agree the order of their names among themselves, and the corresponding author speaks for all of them in dealings with the journal.

• Guest or gift authorship, listing someone who did not contribute, for example because of their seniority or as a favour, is not allowed.
• Ghost authorship, leaving out someone who made a real contribution to the writing, including a paid writer, is not allowed.
• Supervisors are listed as authors only if they meet the same test as everyone else. Supervision alone is acknowledged, not credited as authorship.

A request to add, remove or reorder authors is made from the tracker with the reason, and the editors agree to it only when every author, including anyone being added or removed, has confirmed it. The journal does not decide authorship disputes between authors. If the authors cannot agree, the editors pause the paper and may ask the authors’ institutions to settle the matter.

Conflicts of interest

Authors, reviewers and editors declare their competing interests. An editor with a conflict does not handle the paper. Members of the Board who submit a paper take no part in handling it.

A conflict of interest is anything that a fair-minded reader might think could affect a person’s judgement about a paper. In legal scholarship it often arises from professional work: an author who acted as counsel, arbitrator, mediator or adviser in a matter the paper discusses must say so. Financial interests, employment, close personal relationships and rivalries can also give rise to conflicts.

• Authors declare their competing interests and funding when they submit, and the declaration is printed with the article.
• Reviewers declare any conflict before they accept an invitation, and decline if the conflict is serious.
• Editors step aside from any paper in which they have a conflict, and another editor handles it.
• Members of the Editorial Board may submit to the journal. Their papers are handled by an editor with no conflict, go through external review in the usual way, and the member takes no part in the decision.
• The Publishing Partner, Vidhi Aagaz, takes no part in editorial decisions. A paper from anyone connected with it is handled like any other submission.

Research involving people

Research that involves people, such as interviews, surveys, focus groups or observation of proceedings, must respect the dignity, privacy and safety of the people taking part. Authors must obtain their informed consent, explain to them how the material will be used, and keep their identity confidential unless they have agreed in writing to be named.

Particular care is needed with children, people in custody, survivors of violence, parties to ongoing proceedings and others who may be vulnerable or unable to refuse. Where the author’s institution requires the approval of an ethics committee for such research, the approval must be obtained before the research begins, and its details given when the paper is submitted. The editors may ask to see the consent forms or the approval.

Authors must not disclose information that is confidential under an agreement, a court order or a statute, such as material from confidential arbitration or mediation proceedings, unless it has lawfully become public. They must not identify anyone whose identity the law protects, such as a victim of a sexual offence or a child in conflict with the law, even where another source has done so.

Sources, data and accuracy

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of what they write. Every authority cited must exist and must support the statement it is cited for, and every quotation must be exact. Where a paper relies on empirical material, the authors must describe how it was gathered and keep the underlying data and records, so that the editors can examine them if a question arises. Where the data can be shared lawfully and without breaking a promise of confidentiality, the article should say where it can be found.

Fabricating or falsifying data, sources or quotations, including citing authorities invented by an AI tool, is research misconduct and is dealt with under the procedure below.

Intellectual property

Copyright in each published article rests with Centre for Legal Research and Studies, and articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. The Open access page explains what this means for authors and readers.

• Plagiarism, presenting another person’s words, ideas or findings as one’s own without proper credit, is not accepted in any form, including close paraphrase and translation of a source without acknowledgement.
• Text recycling from an author’s own published work must be cited and kept small. It must not be used to present old work as new.
• Duplicate or redundant publication, publishing substantially the same work more than once, and submitting the same paper to more than one journal at a time, are not accepted.
• Prior versions. A preprint, a conference presentation or a thesis is not treated as prior publication, but it must be disclosed to the editors when the paper is submitted. A paper already published in conference proceedings is considered only if it is substantially developed, and the earlier version must be cited.
• Material owned by others, such as figures, photographs or long extracts, may be reproduced only with permission where the law requires it, and the source must always be credited.

Artificial intelligence

AI tools cannot be authors. Authors must declare any use of AI tools. Reviewers and editors must not upload manuscripts to AI tools.

In line with the COPE position statement on authorship and AI tools, an AI tool cannot take responsibility for a piece of work, so it cannot meet the test of authorship. Authors who use such a tool, for example to check language or to search for material, remain fully responsible for the content, including the accuracy of every citation. Manuscripts are screened for AI-generated text within the limits stated in the Submission guidelines.

Handling allegations of misconduct

Plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, undisclosed conflicts and authorship disputes are handled using the relevant COPE flowchart. The author is asked for an explanation. The outcome may be no action, a correction, rejection or retraction, and the journal may also inform the author’s institution. Every step is recorded.

Anyone may raise a concern about a manuscript or a published article, whether an author, a reviewer, a reader or a member of the public. Concerns can be sent through the complaints page or by email to editor.jgjg@academyclrs.org. Please give the facts and any evidence. A concern raised without a name is considered if it gives specific evidence that can be checked.

1. The editors acknowledge the concern and look at the evidence. If an ethics case is opened on a manuscript under review, the paper is put on hold until the case is settled.
2. If the concern appears to have substance, the authors are told what has been alleged and are asked to respond. Nobody is treated as having done wrong before they have had a chance to explain.
3. The editors decide what to do, taking advice where necessary, and give the authors their decision with reasons.
4. Where the matter cannot be resolved by the journal, or concerns research misconduct, the editors may refer it to the authors’ institution or employer and ask it to investigate.

Concerns are dealt with in confidence. The person who raised a concern is told the outcome, as far as the authors’ privacy allows.

Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions

Errors are corrected with a dated notice linked to the article. Where an investigation is under way, an expression of concern may be published. A retracted article stays available, clearly marked “Retracted” and linked to the retraction notice. Text is removed only for legal reasons.

• Correction (erratum). Published when an error affects the record but does not undermine the article’s findings, for example a wrong citation, a mistake in an author’s name or affiliation, or an error in a table. Authors who find an error report it from the tracker.
• Expression of concern. Published when there are serious doubts about an article that have not yet been resolved, for example while an institution investigates. It is updated or replaced when the outcome is known.
• Retraction. Published when an article’s findings cannot be relied on, because of misconduct or honest error, or when it involves plagiarism, redundant publication or a serious breach of research ethics. The journal follows the COPE Retraction Guidelines. The notice states who is retracting the article and why, in terms that are fair to the authors.
• Removal on legal grounds. In rare cases, such as a court order, a defamatory statement or a risk to someone’s safety, the text may have to be removed. The article’s record and a notice explaining the removal remain in place.
• Withdrawal before publication. An accepted paper that is withdrawn before it is published may be recorded with a short note.

Every notice is approved by the Editor-in-Chief, is free to read, and is linked to and from the article it concerns. A notice on a published article is given a DOI of its own, so the change is visible to anyone who finds the article through Crossref.

Discussion of published work

The journal welcomes scholarly debate about what it publishes. A reader who wishes to respond to an article at length may submit a paper of one of the journal’s article types, which is reviewed in the usual way, and the authors of the original article may be invited to reply. A reader who believes an article contains an error, or raises an ethical concern about it, should write to the editors or use the complaints page, and the matter is dealt with as described above.