Editorial Board Responsibilities

Publication Decisions

The Editorial Board is responsible for making editorial decisions regarding manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Legal and Political Sciences, including acceptance, revision, or rejection. Such decisions are based on initial editorial screening, reviewers’ reports, the relevance of the manuscript to the journal’s scope, compliance with author guidelines, and adherence to research and publication ethics.

Submitted manuscripts are evaluated on the basis of their scholarly merit, originality, clarity of objectives, methodological soundness, accuracy of findings, language quality, proper citation and referencing, and freedom from plagiarism or research misconduct. Publication decisions shall not be influenced by the author’s gender, race, nationality, religious affiliation, social background, political orientation, or institutional affiliation. At the same time, submitted manuscripts must comply with applicable laws and publication ethics and must not contain content that undermines national unity or promotes hatred, sectarianism, or discrimination.

The Editorial Board is committed to enhancing the scientific quality of the journal by applying clear and fair evaluation standards, maintaining editorial independence, and ensuring that publication priority is based on the completion of acceptance, peer-review, and revision procedures according to the chronological order and the journal’s approved editorial policies.

Confidentiality

The Editor-in-Chief, members of the Editorial Board, and all journal staff are required to maintain the confidentiality of all information related to submitted manuscripts. No information concerning a submitted manuscript, its authors, or its reviewers may be disclosed except to authorized parties involved in the editorial and peer-review process, such as authors, reviewers, assigned editors, the publisher, or relevant official or ethical bodies when necessary.

All submitted manuscripts shall be treated as confidential documents before publication. Ideas, data, or findings contained in submitted manuscripts must not be used by members of the Editorial Board, reviewers, or any other party before publication without the explicit written permission of the authors.

Conflict of Interest

Members of the Editorial Board must disclose any potential conflict of interest that may affect their handling of a submitted manuscript. If an editor has a personal, academic, professional, financial, or institutional relationship with any author or with the subject matter of the manuscript, the editor must recuse themselves from handling the manuscript and assign it to another independent editor.

Reviewer Selection and Peer-Review Management

The Editorial Board is responsible for selecting qualified reviewers with appropriate expertise in the subject area of the manuscript, while ensuring confidentiality, impartiality, and the avoidance of conflicts of interest. The Editorial Board shall monitor the peer-review process to ensure the quality of reviewers’ reports, fairness of editorial decisions, and respect for the journal’s expected review timelines as far as possible.

Handling Research Misconduct

The Editorial Board shall take seriously any allegation related to plagiarism, duplicate publication, data fabrication, manipulation of results, or any breach of research and publication ethics. The Editorial Board may take appropriate actions, including requesting clarification from the authors, rejecting the manuscript, publishing a correction, issuing an expression of concern, or retracting a published article, in accordance with the journal’s policies and publication ethics.

Post-Publication Corrections and Updates

The Editorial Board is committed to addressing significant errors that may be identified after publication and to taking the appropriate action, including publishing a correction, clarification, expression of concern, or retraction, depending on the nature of the error and its effect on the reliability of the research and its findings.