Ethics and Responsibility statement and guidelines

Ethics and Responsibility

The International Institute for the Sociology of Law is committed to upholding the integrity of the work we publish. The value of academic publishing relies on everyone involved behaving ethically. The following points are intended to give a broad overview on our policy. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact the Editor of Oñati Socio-Legal Series (hereinafter, “OSLS” or “the journal”).

Ethical issues to consider

Authors:

  • Originality and plagiarism: Authors must ensure that their work is original and entirely written by them. Where the works or words of others or of their own published writing have been used, the sources must be clearly cited or quoted, following OSLS's house style guidelines, or appropriately acknowledged, and appropriate permission must be obtained where necessary.

OSLS requires that all authors, by checking the appropriate item in the Submission Process, confirm that their submitted work has not been published before and is not under consideration at any other journal. This excludes non-commercial publication, e.g. as pre-print, proceeding, presentation, work notes, and similar formats.

If elements of a work have been previously published, including publication in Oñati Socio-Legal Series, the authors are required to acknowledge the earlier work, giving details of each publication, and to indicate how the work submitted to OSLS differs and builds upon the research and conclusions contained in the previous work. 

In the event that OSLS is made aware of any allegation of plagiarism or self-plagiarism, OSLS will deal with allegations appropriately and, if plagiarism or self-plagiarism is made evident, OSLS will ask the authors to retract the article. In any case, OSLS reserves the right to retract an article that has been proven to be plagiarised or self-plagiarised. OSLS will always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

  • Research Ethics: Authors should ensure that research presented in their manuscripts has been conducted in accordance with ethical guidelines widely accepted in socio-legal scholarship, provided by either their home institutions or scientific organizations of reference. OSLS and the IISL endorse SLSA's Principles of Ethical Research Practice and recommend following these principles (https://www.slsa.ac.uk/images/slsadownloads/
    ethicalstatement/slsa%20ethics%20statement%20_final_%5b1%5d.pdf    ). In case of conflict or in order to establish the ethical nature of the research reflected in any particular work, OSLS may request the author(s) to ensure and express that they have followed these or other relevant ethic codes to conduct their research, and include a general disclaimer on behalf of the IISL.
  • Rights: Their work must not infringe on any rights of others, including privacy rights and intellectual property rights.
  • Data presentation, access, and retention: The data must be true and research results must be presented clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification or inappropriate data manipulation. Such data must be the authors’ own or they must where necessary have permission to use data reproduced in their paper. Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to provide public access to such data.
  • Presentation of research: Research methods should be described clearly and unambiguously so that findings can be confirmed by others.
  • Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Any real or apparent conflicting or competing interest must be clearly stated in the paper, including sources of funding or other support for the research.
  • Significant errors in published works: If an author subsequently discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to contact the Journal to identify and correct the error or inaccuracy, and cooperate with the Journal to retract or correct the paper.
  • Authorship of the paper must be accurately represented, so that all individuals that participated in the actual authorship of the work, and only those persons, are properly credited as authors, and that all who participated have given consent for publication and representation as authors.

Submissions from authors who have been published by the journal within the previous natural year will not be considered, unless the returning author is a co-author of a paper for which they are not the first author.

Reviewers must:

  • Maintain the confidentiality of the review process.
  • Immediately alert the Journal of any real or potential competing interest that could affect the impartiality of their reviewing and decline to review where appropriate.
  • Conduct themselves fairly and impartially.
  • Write their reviews with rigour and honesty, as is expected in a journal indexed in high-quality databases. Reviewers are expected to say honestly whether they recommend the article for publication in OSLS or not, and why.
  • Write their reviews in a respectful manner, avoiding the use of inappropriate, demeaning, or potentially offensive language.

Issue Editors must:

  • Maintain and promote consistent ethical policies for their journal issue.
  • Oversee and act to enforce those policies as needed in a fair and consistent manner.
  • Exercise the highest standards of personal integrity in their work as editor of the journal, recognising and planning for instances where they could have a competing interest or the appearance of a competing interest.
  • Preselect contributions for the special issue before these are sent to the journal, and exercise their right to decline contributions or to work together with authors to improve accepted contributions.
  • Ensure that the content and quality requirements of all the papers from the issue are met.