Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

(based on Elsevier recommendations, COPE's Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, Brazilian rules for research with human participants)

Law and Praxis Journal is committed to ensuring ethics in publication and quality of articles.

Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors and Reviewers.

In particular,

Authors:Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of research work as well as sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the experiments. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and portray accurate accounts of the state of the art. The authors should ensure that their work is entirely original and that, if the work and/or words of others have been used, this has been appropriately acknowledged. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication. 

Authors must also fully disclosure if their manuscripts have been already published as drafts or first versions in pre-print platforms. This kind of former publication does not impede the publication in the Law and Praxis journal, but it has to be informed to the editors.

Editors: Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper. In order to guarantee the quality of articles and avoid cases of plagiarism or lack of disclosure of former publications, all manuscripts are analysed through anti-plagiarism software by the editors after desk review.

In case of complaints about misconduct, use of false information, or publication of wrongfully and antithetical collected data, the editors will contact immediately the authors asking for information within a week. This process aims at guaranteeing that all involved authors and complainers are heard. The editors will take the complaint and information provided by the authors to the editorial board to decide about the article and a possible publication withdrawal. The decision will be communicated to the complainers and authors within a week and it will be also published as a retraction in the first coming issue.

Reviewers: Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments, so that authors can use them for improving the paper. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and excuse himself from the review process. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.