§ 1
Church Law Review (hereinafter “ChLR”) publishes articles in the fields of church law, religion law and legal history, whose high quality is assured by an anonymous peer-review process. Review and evaluation of manuscripts must therefore be thorough, objective and fair.
§ 2
This Code of Ethics describes the principles of ethical behaviour of all participants in the review and evaluation of the manuscript. Authors, editors and reviewers are required to follow rules set out in this Code of Ethics. The internationally accepted standards COPE will be applied in case of misconduct of these principles.
§ 3
Each manuscript submitted to the ChLR for evaluation must be an original piece of work. The manuscript should not be published or accepted for publication in another journal or publisher. Exceptions to the rule of originality are valid for the following works:
1) conference papers published on the web site of the conference;
2) unpublished master’s, doctoral, or habilitation thesis.
The author cannot send ChLR a manuscript for consideration that is subject to assessment by another publication, or send a manuscript under consideration by the ChLR to another journal.
§ 4
The manuscript must not contain plagiarism, falsification, fiction or serious omissions. The authors are obliged to refer to and clearly cite the works of other authors if quoted verbatim, or if they have paraphrased their thoughts. In the case of plagiarism or auto-plagiarism (repeated publication of an author’s own works), the manuscript will be rejected.
§ 5
Auto-plagiarism (duplicate publications of his or her own work) is in principle unacceptable. If the manuscript draws from another author’s work that has already been published in print or considered for publication, the author must give credit to this work.
§ 6
Authors can publish partial results of their research in several publications. Each of these publications, however, must maintain its originality. The texts must differ as to their research objective and differ in a corresponding degree of structure, content or language.
§ 7
The author must ensure that the manuscript does not violate any copyrights. If the author uses foreign works (graphics, tables) and their use requires the consent of the author, he or she is responsible for obtaining necessary permissions before submitting the manuscript. Church Law Society as a journal publisher holds the copyright on all articles published in the ChLR. Reprinting an article published in ChLR for use as a book chapter or in translation is possible. However, the author must seek the express consent of the publisher of the journal before re-publishing the article. To request permission to reprint an article published in ChLR, please send an e-mail to the editor of the journal.
§ 8
Editors (members of the editorial board) retain their independence. Editors cannot abuse their position and must provide access to authors discreetly, impartially, promptly, constructively and sensitively. The editors assess manuscripts on the basis of their professional qualities, without ideological prejudices and personal preferences. Editors seek theoretical and methodological pluralism, but should also expect manuscripts to have an adequate level of expertise that will be beneficial to the reader.
§ 9
As part of the review process, a manuscript will be evaluated by two renowned experts whose professional profile corresponds to the assessed contribution. An editor selects reviewers based on their publications on the subject, their academic contributions and their previous experience as authors or reviewers in ChLR.
§ 10
Authors can request that the manuscript not be evaluated by specific reviewers, but the final decision on the selection of reviewers is left to the discretion of the editors.
§ 11
The responsibility for the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts belongs to the editor-in-chief, and will be consistent with the recommendations of the reviewers as a team. Editors inform authors of the results of the review process and the final decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript.
§ 12
Processing evaluation reports for the journal brings benefit to the author, the journal and the scientific community as a whole. Editors appreciate the time and energy reviewers devote to expressing their opinion. Reviewers should abstain from reviewing a manuscript if their position or affiliation can cause a potential conflict of interest. If there is a potential conflict of interest, reviewers must inform our editorial office.
§ 13
Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts impartially, objectively, fairly and professionally. Reviewers ought to be honest with the author if they have doubts about the quality of the manuscript. Reviewers are expected to provide adequately reasoned recommendation to the editors, and provide sufficient comments and recommended changes to the author. Reviewers must compile the evaluation report promptly based on the agreed date. In case of doubts about the evaluation of the manuscript a third reviewer is appointed.
When formalizing the Code, we were inspired from the following sources:
