Journal of Law and Public Policy Review (REPORT) is committed to maintaining a fair, transparent, independent, and academically rigorous editorial process. Editorial decisions are based on scholarly merit, originality, methodological or analytical quality, ethical compliance, relevance to the journal's Focus and Scope, and contribution to law, public policy, governance, regulation, institutional development, or justice.
Editorial decisions are made independently of commercial, financial, institutional, political, or personal interests. The publisher does not determine whether an individual manuscript is accepted or rejected.
Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on their scholarly quality, relevance, originality, analytical rigor, ethical compliance, and contribution to the journal's academic field.
All manuscripts undergo initial editorial screening before peer review. The editorial team assesses whether the submission is consistent with the journal's Focus and Scope and whether it meets minimum scholarly, ethical, and presentation standards.
Initial screening may consider:
Manuscripts that are clearly outside the journal's scope or do not meet fundamental scholarly requirements may be declined during editorial screening without external peer review.
REPORT applies a double-anonymous peer review process. The identities of authors and reviewers are concealed from each other during the review process.
Manuscripts that pass initial screening are normally evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise in the manuscript's subject area.
Reviewers are expected to provide objective, constructive, evidence-based, and confidential assessments of the manuscript's originality, reasoning, methodology, use of evidence, interpretation, and scholarly contribution.
Peer-review reports inform editorial decisions but do not automatically determine the final outcome. The responsible editor evaluates reviewer comments together with the manuscript's overall scholarly merit.
Editorial decisions may include:
Acceptance is based on the quality of the final revised manuscript and does not result automatically from completion of a review round.
Editors and reviewers must disclose any relationship or circumstance that could reasonably create an actual, potential, or perceived conflict of interest in evaluating a manuscript.
An editor should not handle a manuscript when a close professional, institutional, financial, collaborative, supervisory, personal, or other relationship could compromise editorial independence.
In such cases, responsibility for the manuscript should be transferred to another qualified editor without a relevant conflict.
REPORT supports internationally recognized principles of responsible scholarly publishing and follows publication-ethics guidance informed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, manipulated peer review, inappropriate authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, citation manipulation, or intentional misrepresentation of evidence are not acceptable.
Allegations of misconduct will be considered objectively, confidentially, and proportionately based on the available evidence.
Manuscripts may be screened using similarity-detection software. Similarity reports are evaluated contextually and are not interpreted solely on the basis of a numerical percentage.
Unattributed copying, inappropriate paraphrasing, duplicate or redundant publication, and substantial reuse of previously published material may result in rejection or appropriate post-publication action.
Artificial intelligence systems and generative AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot assume responsibility for scholarly content or research integrity.
Authors remain fully responsible for all content submitted to the journal. Substantive use of generative AI in manuscript preparation, analysis, coding, translation, data interpretation, or figure generation should be transparently disclosed where relevant.
Editors and reviewers should not upload confidential manuscripts, reviewer reports, unpublished data, or editorial correspondence to publicly accessible AI systems where confidentiality and data protection cannot be assured.
Authors may submit a reasoned appeal when they believe that a significant factual, procedural, or ethical issue affected an editorial decision.
Appeals should identify the specific issue being challenged and provide a clear scholarly justification rather than merely expressing disagreement with the editorial outcome.
Complaints concerning editorial conduct, peer review, conflicts of interest, or publication ethics will be reviewed objectively by an appropriate editor or journal representative not directly involved in the disputed matter where practicable.
The journal is committed to preserving the accuracy and integrity of the scholarly record.
Corrections may be issued when errors affect the accuracy or interpretation of a published article but do not invalidate its principal findings.
Retractions may be considered when findings are unreliable because of major error, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, serious ethical breaches, or other substantial research-integrity concerns.
An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious concerns have been identified but sufficient evidence for a definitive editorial action is not yet available.
