PUBLICATION ETHICS

Authorship and Author’s Responsibilities:

  1. Authors should not submit a manuscript previously published in an international / local / national journal. A manuscript should not be submitted in the same or different languages, simultaneously to more than one journal or book available through a library or by purchase;
  2. In multi-author papers all authors should have made a significant intellectual contribution to the study. “Ghost”, “Guest”, and “Gift” authors are considered unacceptable. All authors should take collective responsibility and agree on the content of the paper;
  3. Authors should provide valid information about themselves. (e.g., valid emails);
  4. If the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that should appropriately cited or quoted. References must reflect a valid state of both the historical development of the subject and the current state of opinion in the field;
  5. Authors should declare all support and funding sources in an Acknowledgment and if the role of the research funder has been beyond providing funding that should also be described. (e.g., role in study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report);
  6. Authors should supply promptly any missing items or information requested by the editors;
  7. Authors should not make significant changes to their manuscript after acceptance without the approval of the journal;
  8. Authors should notify immediately the journal if significant errors or academic misconduct are found after publication and collaborate with the editor so that an appropriate correction or retraction can be made.

Peer Review Procedure:

  1. The Editorial Board of the Journal is aware that peer view is the critical phase of the publishing process. All submitted papers are reviewed at least by two experts of which at least one is not part of the editorial staff;
  2. Reviewers should have sufficient subject expertise to evaluate the scientific and practical value of the paper;
  3. Reviewers are allowed to consult their colleagues about the paper, but are not allowed to pass on the paper to another referee without notifying the Editor in Chief or Deputy Editor in Chief or the Chairman of the Editorial Board.
  4. If a reviewer is unable to assess the paper, he/she should return or inform the Editor in Chief or Deputy Editor in Chief or the Chairman of the Editorial Board immediately. His/ Her suggestions for alternatives would be considered.
  5. Editor in Chief may appoint new reviewers because of the reports written superficially without a clear explanation as to why the article should either be accepted or rejected;
  6. The average time for evaluation is about two months. However, authors should note that each submission is assessed on its individual merit and in certain circumstances estimating time may differ;
  7. Editorial Board attaches high importance to reviewer reports. They should be provided timely and be constructive. These reports should contain concrete arguments referring to the paper which support the decision of the reviewer and not be written in harsh language with insulting expressions or personal attacks;
  8. Reviewers should disqualify themselves from reviewing in cases that they have a very similar manuscript submitted elsewhere in preparation, have conflict of interest with the authors and/or the research fund or they feel that they are unable to provide an honest and unbiased assessment for any reason;
  9. Reviewers should keep the submission and contents of manuscripts confidential, they should not contact the authors directly or anyone else about reviewing a manuscript without the knowledge and permission of the journal;
  10. Reviewers are not allowed to use author’s manuscript in their researches without permission from the author and should destroy copies of manuscripts after submitting their reviews;
  11. Reviewers should notify journals in case of any suspicion of misconduct such as possible data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, unethical research, biased reporting, authorship abuse, redundant or duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest;
  12. If all the reviewers’ reports are positive the paper will be accepted for publication. However, when at least one of the reports is negative, then the manuscript will be sent out to a different reviewer. If the report of this reviewer also is negative, then the paper will be rejected. In the case when the second report is positive, the manuscript will be sent to the Editor in Chief for ultimate decision.

Editorial Responsibilities:

  1. Editor in Chief ensures that his/her behavior is transparent beyond reproach, treats all authors with fairness, courtesy, objectivity, honesty and avoids all discrimination on ethnic or geographical origin of the authors;
  2. Editor in Chief ensures the appropriateness of language in both submitted manuscripts and also in peer review reports or correspondence and ensure that these documents do not contain anything that is defamatory, libelous or likely to confuse the authors;
  3. Editor in Chief may reject a paper without further evaluation for publication if the paper does not abide journal’s policies or the subject matter of the paper is out of the scope of the journal;
  4. Before making a decision about controversial papers or papers with nonstandard ideas, the Editor in Chief would confer with the Editorial Board members;
  5. Editor in Chief maintains the confidentiality of all submitted papers and ensures that author’s unpublished materials in his/her research are not used without his/her permission;
  6. Editor in Chief investigates all suspected cases of misconduct and puts in place necessary procedures such as publishing appropriate correction notes, retraction or withdrawal of the paper;
  7. Editor in Chief concurrently informs the author, reviewers, abstracting and indexing ser-vices and the readers of the publication about retraction or withdrawal of the publication from the journal;
  8. Editor in Chief monitors the performance of peer reviewers for quality and timeliness, ensures that they abide the policy of peer reviewers’ ethical responsibilities of the journal;
  9. Editor in Chief mediates all exchanges between authors and peer reviewers during the peer-review process. Editor in Chief may seek comments from additional peer reviewers to help them make their final decision;
  10. Editor in Chief ensures timely publication and avoids unnecessary delays;
  11. Editor in Chief may request more data or clarification from authors if they come across anything unclear or suspicious (data fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, image manipulation, unethical research, biased reporting, authorship abuse, redundant or duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest);
  12. Editor in Chief and/or editorial team members exclude themselves from publication decisions when they are authors or have contributed to a manuscript;
  13. Editor in Chief communicates to authors exactly what the decision is on their manuscript, the reasons for it (if appropriate what conditions need to be met for the journal to consider the manuscript again);
  14. Editor in Chief has complete right and authority to make the final decisions and to decide which of the submitted manuscripts should be published.

Journal Publishing Policies:

  1. Journal investigates all cases suspected of errors, fraudulent data or plagiarism and if there is a clear evidence of misconduct; puts in place necessary procedures such as publishing appropriate correction notes, retraction or withdrawal of the paper;
  2. All the Volumes are published in website and collaborator databases. Submission and publication of articles are free of charge.

On all other aspects of the monitoring publications ethics and malpractice the journal strictly adheres to the international standards developed by: http://publicationethics.org 

 

APPENDIX TO PUBLICATION ETHICS

  1. References should be in an alphabetical order regardless of existence of laws, statutes, any normative acts, textbooks and articles in the list of references.
  2. References from recent years’ studies are recommended.
  3. Reference list should be in English. If any reference is in another language in original, the name of reference should be translated into English, then the original language should be mentioned. Example: Davudov, D.D. Criminal Law (General Part). Moscow Publisher House, 2009 (in Russian).
  4. Example of reference style to laws, statutes, court decisions: a) The Law of the Republic of Azerbaijan on State Procurement (name), 2021 (with amendments; adoption date, if amendments exist, together with them); b) The Judgement 1(100)-100/2024 of Baku Appeal Court, 2024 (related court, judgement number and date).
  5. Reference style of textbooks: Ergun, O.F. Turkish Constitutional Law (name of author and work). Ankara, Ekin Publishing House, 2023, 245 p. (publishing house and date). 14th Edition (in case of new editions).
  6. Reference style of journal articles: Samirov, R.D. Principles of the civil procedure (name of author and work). Baku State Uni. Law Rev., V.01, N. 5, 2024. P. 134-137 (name of journal in a form of abbreviation based on ISO 4 standards, date, volume, number and related pages).
  7. Reference style of conference and collective materials: Ahmadov, C.C. The pre-revolutionary penal system of Russian Empire (name of author and work), in Aliev A.I (in + editor’s name). Conference materials of Modern Trends in Law, Baku University, 2017, p. 200-220 (name of collection, publisher, date and pages).
  8. Reference style of Internet-based resources: Mahirov, Y.Q. Philosophical background of transnational criminal law (name of author and work). URL: https…….. (URL of the address), last access – 01.01.2024 (the date of last access to the URL).
  9. Papers must contain originality and modernity, and not have been published previously and/or under consideration for publication in any journal or book. The sequence of introduction-main part-conclusion should be expected in the article, the annotation should not be less than 100 words in all three languages ​​(Azerbaijani, Russian, English), and keywords should vary between 8-12.
  10. Papers from 5 to 15 pages are recommended.
  11. Interval should be 1.0, font Times New Roman, 12, indent and spacing 2 for all sides.