LEXANTARA expects honest scholarship, accurate legal authorities, transparent authorship and funding, ethical research and independent editorial decisions. Plagiarism, fabricated cases or sources, data falsification, purchased authorship, manipulated review and coercive citation are prohibited. Concerns receive proportionate investigation and an opportunity to respond.
This is the authoritative publication-ethics policy. It applies to authors, editors, reviewers, staff, guest editors and the publisher. The policy is informed by international guidance; neither COPE membership nor automatic accreditation is claimed.
Contacts: dedicated research-integrity, appeals, complaints and independent-oversight contacts will be published on the Contact page. Until then, concerns can be sent to the Adhikara Publisher journal secretariat listed there.
Authorship, contributorship and funding
An author must make a substantial intellectual contribution, participate in drafting or substantive revision, approve the final manuscript and accept accountability for their contribution and the integrity of the work. Funding, status, routine administration and seniority alone do not qualify. Describe actual contributions, using CRediT roles where useful. A sole author may state sole responsibility. Acknowledge other contributors with their permission and disclose substantive paid writing or editing assistance.
The corresponding author confirms coauthor agreement, submission exclusivity, author order and final proofs, and keeps all authors informed. List real affiliations relevant to the work and identify a current address separately where needed. ORCID is encouraged, not a substitute for identity checks. Gift, guest and ghost authorship, purchased authorship and impersonation are prohibited.
Adding or removing an author, changing order, or changing the corresponding author requires an explanation, agreement of all affected authors and independent editorial approval. After acceptance, changes require heightened verification; after publication, an authorised change follows a visible correction when it affects authorship. Name or pronoun updates that do not change authorship may be handled confidentially where appropriate without publishing a former identity. Authorship disputes may pause publication and be referred to institutions; editors assess the record but do not adjudicate employment disputes.
Declare all financial and in-kind support, grant identifiers where relevant, and the funder’s role in design, access, analysis, writing and the decision to publish. Declare no funding and no competing interests where that is accurate. Report sponsor review rights or restrictions. Publication must not proceed where a restriction prevents credible assessment or requires distortion of findings.
Research ethics, consent and sensitive legal evidence
Doctrinal analysis of public legal materials ordinarily does not involve participant recruitment; authors should state why ethics review was not applicable where appropriate. Interviews, surveys, observation, identifiable records and other human-participant research require the approval or documented exemption applicable to the study. Give the reviewing body, reference and date where available. Where no body or formal exemption mechanism exists, explain the institutional context, applicable requirements and protective steps; the editor may seek independent ethical advice. Do not invent retrospective approval.
Explain informed consent, power imbalances, recruitment and confidentiality, including researcher roles as employer, teacher, government official or legal adviser. Participation consent is distinct from consent to publish identifiable material. Obtain and report specific publication consent where identification is possible and consent is required; justify any lawful ethical exception for public records rather than assuming that public access eliminates risk.
Protect privilege, client confidentiality, court restrictions, sealed records, confidential awards, settlement terms and contractual duties. Anonymise or minimise information about vulnerable parties and commercially sensitive matters where appropriate. Obtain necessary permissions or another lawful basis before sharing. Do not submit original client files or raw interviews to the journal unless specifically requested through an agreed secure route. Clinical, animal or tissue research is not an ordinary fit for this law journal; any exceptional interdisciplinary submission requires appropriate specialist ethics assessment rather than a generic declaration.
Plagiarism, similarity screening and citation integrity
Plagiarism includes presenting another person’s words, ideas, translation, analysis, data or images as one’s own without adequate acknowledgement. It includes unattributed paraphrase and mosaic copying. Text recycling is undisclosed reuse of one’s earlier material; redundant or duplicate publication presents substantially the same contribution as new. Legitimate overlap in background or methods is assessed by extent, attribution, disclosure and effect on originality.
Submissions may be screened before review, at revision, before acceptance or when a concern arises, using only tools approved under confidentiality and security arrangements. The journal will identify its similarity-screening process on this page once implemented. It does not apply a universal acceptable similarity percentage or treat a score as proof of plagiarism. Statutory wording, treaty provisions, standard legal phrases, quotations and bibliographies need contextual assessment.
Editors inspect matched passages, source attribution and prior versions, request an explanation where concerns are credible, and apply the due-process rules below. Lowering a score by disguising copied text does not resolve plagiarism. Unverifiable cases, fabricated authorities, falsified quotations, manipulated data or images, bought manuscripts and manipulated review are integrity concerns even when a similarity report is low.
Citations must support the proposition and be relevant. Coercive or irrelevant self-citation, citation rings and requests to inflate journal metrics are prohibited. Authors may raise concerns about citation requests through the independent complaints route.
Allegations of misconduct and investigation
Report specific concerns about submitted or published work to the journal’s research-integrity contact. Allegations involving the Editor in Chief, the publisher or the assigned officer go to the independent oversight contact. Anonymous and pseudonymous reports are assessed on evidence; good-faith whistleblowers are protected from retaliation, and public identification is not a condition of consideration.
A non-conflicted editor records the allegation, checks jurisdiction, preserves relevant evidence, assesses immediate risks and requests an explanation from the corresponding author and affected coauthors where appropriate, normally within 14–30 days, with reasonable extensions. A review or publication pause is protective, not a finding of guilt. Information is shared only with people who need it, subject to applicable duties and a fair opportunity to respond.
The journal determines publication reliability and editorial action; institutions and other competent bodies investigate matters beyond editorial authority, and are contacted with proportionate relevant evidence where warranted. Lack of an institutional response does not prevent correction where adequate evidence establishes unreliability. The journal does not promise absolute confidentiality that would prevent legitimate investigation.
Outcomes may include no action with reasons, clarification, corrected declarations, additional review, rejection, correction, expression of concern or retraction. Severity and evidence are considered: honest error and deliberate fraud are not equivalent. Any submission restriction requires an individual reasoned decision, a stated duration and an appeal route, not an automatic universal ban. Affected parties are informed of the reasoned outcome as confidentiality permits. An audit record is kept and independent appeal is available. Investigations may continue after withdrawal.
Complaints, appeals and equitable treatment
An appeal challenges an editorial decision or process and should identify a factual error, procedural defect or material overlooked evidence, normally within 30 days. Justified late appeals may be considered. Send it to the appeals contact with the manuscript identifier and grounds. The original decision-maker does not determine the appeal. An independent editor may uphold the decision, order reassessment or obtain new reviews, and explains the outcome and any remaining internal route. An appeal does not guarantee acceptance.
A complaint concerns conduct, service, discrimination, confidentiality, fees, staff, the board or publisher. Send it to the complaints contact; if that handler or a senior officer is implicated, use the independent oversight route. The matter is recorded, receipt is confirmed, a non-conflicted handler is appointed and the process is explained. Complex delays are explained and updates provided.
Scholarship is assessed without discrimination based on nationality, ethnicity, race, religion, political belief, gender, disability, institutional prestige or ability to pay. Reasonable adjustments are provided while maintaining evidence and integrity standards. Any applicable legal restriction is explained and contested decisions are independently examined. Reference to COPE guidance does not imply that COPE will adjudicate LEXANTARA complaints or that this journal is a member.
Special issues, guest editors and conference material
A proposal must state the scholarly rationale, scope, guest-editor expertise and conflicts, intended article types, recruitment approach, timetable, review capacity and funding. The Editor in Chief assesses the proposal and retains oversight of every paper and the collection. Public calls must identify the journal, editors and standards and must not imply guaranteed acceptance.
Guest editors receive induction on scope, confidentiality, conflicts, reviewer verification and misconduct. They cannot handle their own work or closely connected submissions. Regular external review and editorial independence apply; sponsorship and conference fees do not purchase acceptance. Guest editors cannot sell authorship, reviewers or publication slots. An independent editor handles guest-editor submissions, and the published article discloses this arrangement.
Conference papers must be developed into a suitable original contribution; disclose proceedings and prior versions, secure permissions and assess overlap. Conference attendance, recommendation or invitation is not peer review for journal publication. All special-issue items carry the same declarations, licence, dates and assessment labels as ordinary content. The journal may stop a compromised collection while assessing each paper fairly and communicating with authors.
Preprints, theses, translations and withdrawal
Preprints, theses, working papers, presentations and institutional reports do not automatically bar consideration. Disclose their location, date and identifiers and explain the new contribution and overlap. Public dissemination may reduce anonymity. Do not post confidential reviewer reports without permission or imply that a preprint is peer reviewed. Update earlier public versions with a link to the version of record once published where possible.
A translation or authorised secondary publication requires prior editorial agreement, necessary rights, transparent labelling and citation of the original. It is not assessed or presented as wholly new original research merely because it is in English. Related submissions are assessed together for originality and publication rights. Simultaneous consideration by another journal remains prohibited.
Before publication, the corresponding author may request withdrawal through the editorial office with reasons and coauthor agreement where appropriate. Withdrawal is confirmed in writing and its date recorded. If an author reports a material delay, the journal explains the situation and facilitates a reasonable withdrawal request. After publication, correction or retraction procedures apply rather than routine deletion. No submission, review or withdrawal fee is proposed in this framework; any change requires a published prospective policy. An unresolved integrity inquiry can continue despite withdrawal.
Data, materials, reproducibility and research transparency
Every research item includes a data and materials availability statement. Doctrinal work may state that it analyses cited public legal authorities and that no new empirical dataset was generated. Such a statement does not remove the duty to identify legal sources, selection criteria and interpretive method. Provide source lists or document-selection protocols where these support evaluation.
For empirical work, describe the dataset or corpus, provenance, collection period, sampling, coding, analysis and limitations. Deposit lawful non-sensitive data, code and supporting materials in a stable repository when feasible, identify versions and persistent identifiers, and cite them. Preregistration, if used, should be identified and deviations explained; it is not compulsory for every legal study. Replications and well-supported negative or null findings within scope are welcome.
Privacy, privilege, contractual restrictions, security, Indigenous data obligations and third-party licences may justify restricted access. Explain what is restricted, why, and whether a lawful controlled-access route exists. Do not promise “available on request” where access cannot in fact be granted. Share enough non-sensitive method information for review. Data-sharing expectations must not compel unlawful disclosure; the editor assesses whether limitations prevent credible evaluation.
FAIR principles apply where appropriate, together with relevant community data governance, including CARE where applicable. The journal may request lawful underlying records to investigate credible concerns through secure channels, with proportionate protection. Retention obligations should be compatible with consent, institutional policy and applicable law, not a universal indefinite release requirement.
Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions and removal
Material errors that leave the work substantially reliable receive a linked correction. Serious unresolved concerns may require an expression of concern while investigation continues, including when an institutional inquiry is prolonged or inconclusive. Retraction addresses seriously unreliable work or other substantial publication-integrity failures. The aim is to protect the record rather than punish disagreement. Editors may act without unanimous author agreement where evidence warrants it and report material disagreement fairly.
Notices identify the article, issuer, date, reason and action; they are openly accessible and linked in both directions. Metadata is corrected, relevant repositories and service providers are notified where practical, and version history is preserved. Retracted articles normally remain accessible with conspicuous labelling and a link to the notice. Substantive text is never silently replaced, and an article identity is never reused for an unrelated replacement.
Full-text removal is exceptional, for example an overriding legal requirement or serious privacy or safety risk that cannot reasonably be mitigated otherwise. The reason is documented, appropriate advice is sought, and bibliographic metadata and an explanatory notice are retained where lawful. A complaint, legal threat or author preference alone does not automatically establish a ground for removal. Minor typographic changes may follow a documented version log if meaning is unaffected; changes to authorship or substantive findings require the appropriate visible record.
A confidential name-update request may be handled without disclosing a former identity; this is distinct from concealing an authorship dispute. The record of internal decisions is retained securely. An independent appeal route remains available for contested integrity actions.
Post-publication discussion and right of reply
Readers may submit a reasoned comment, critique or replication through the editorial office. Identify the article and the evidence, distinguish factual concern from interpretive disagreement, and declare interests. Comments are screened for scope, relevance, privacy, civility, unsupported allegations and conflicts; substantial new research claims may require external review.
Authors are normally invited to respond within a reasonable stated period, but cannot veto a well-founded critique. If they decline, publication may proceed with a fair note. Comments and responses identify their assessment route and are linked to the original article. Allegations of misconduct are processed under this policy, not resolved by public argument alone. The journal does not operate an open website comment forum.
Disclaimer, permissions and professional responsibilities
Published articles express the authors’ analyses and do not necessarily represent the publisher, editors, institutions or funders. Scholarly content is not personalised legal, investment or professional advice and does not create an adviser–client relationship. This disclaimer does not excuse inaccurate publication practices, remove the need to correct errors or override applicable responsibilities.
Authors must have permission or another lawful basis for reproducing protected figures, tables, text, proprietary datasets and confidential materials. Supply permission records confidentially when requested and credit any material excluded from the article licence.
Do not name parties or reproduce documents merely for publicity or to advance a client’s position. Explain professional involvement and limits on disclosure. Editors obtain independent advice where privilege, court restrictions, defamation, personal safety or threats to editorial independence materially affect publication, preserving fair scholarly disagreement and an appropriate record of the decision.
Policy review and change control
These policies are reviewed at least annually after adoption, or sooner for significant developments. Dated policy versions and a change log are kept accessible to readers. Material changes to fees, licences, AI rules and data requirements are notified before they take effect, stating how manuscripts already in review are treated. No new adverse condition is imposed retrospectively without fair notice and consideration. Integrity concerns may be addressed whenever discovered using fair procedures.
Policy version: founding draft 2.2 (2 November 2026), pending formal adoption.