Publishing Ethics
The Journal of Public Law: Theory and Methods adheres the ethic norms established in the Committee on Publications Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines, aimed at the main actors involved in the publication of scientific articles: editorial teams, authors and reviewers. These norms are as follows:
1. Regarding the publishers and editors
They will keep the software updated in order to allow the submission, evaluation and publication of the papers and will ensure the anonymity during the whole publishing process.
They must maintain the confidentiality about contributions’ authorship. Authors’ identity cannot be disclosed to anybody other than authorised members of the Journal’s publishing house or the Journal’s boards.
They must ensure impartiality while handling submitted papers as well as due respect for the intellectual independency of authors. Manuscripts will be evaluated according exclusively to their content, regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political affiliation or school of thought of their authors.
2. Regarding reviewers
The Journal will have a database of peer reviewers comprised by experts of recognised academic standing that are external to the Journal’s boards and publishing house. Reviewers will reject any evaluation assignment if they deem their specialty field unsuitable to the manuscript’s matter, if they cannot undertake the evaluation within the deadline and in the event that a conflict of interest may exist.
The evaluation, that must be undertaken omitting reviewer’s identity, must be an objective, technique and constructive review aimed to improve the manuscript.
3. Regarding authors
Authors should submit papers that present an original research on a clearly identifiable topic.
Authors commit themselves to respect empirical evidences and not to alter original data in order to confirm or refute the initial hypothesis.
Ideas of others must be clearly credited when used; plagiarism is an unacceptable conduct whose detection involves the rejection of the paper or, if already published, its withdrawal from the website. In case of co-authorship, every author should identify which contents other co-authors are responsible from. Likewise, every author must maintain confidentiality on contents’ authorship until publication.
Manuscripts shall be sent to the Journal using the established online means. All the authors of the paper will be identified in the referral message, indicating their names and surnames, ORCID code, email, affiliation institution and the country of origin. In addition, authors must declare that they are aware of and accept the contents of the regulations governing the Journal as well as its code of ethics and good practices. Authors also must indicate that the submitted paper has been neither published yet nor is involved in any publishing process. In the absence of such a statement, authors will be required to submit it within an established deadline with the warning that otherwise their manuscripts will not be considered for publication.
Simultaneous submission of a paper to another journal must be notified by authors to the editorial team so that proper measures can be adopted. Authors must state any possible conflict of interest, including the sources of funding, at the beginning of the paper. When necessary, the conflict of interest will also be mentioned among the closing remarks.