Siyasah Dusturiyah: State Law Review (SDLR) is dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of publication ethics in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices. These standards apply to all participants in the publication process authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers and aim to guarantee transparency, accountability, and integrity in scholarly communication.

Editorial Responsibilities
Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on their intellectual merit, originality, and relevance to SDLR’s scope, without consideration of the author’s race, gender, religion, nationality, or institutional affiliation. All submissions undergo a double-masked peer-review process to ensure impartiality. Editors and editorial staff must preserve the confidentiality of manuscript content, author identities, and reviewer comments; unpublished materials may not be used for personal advantage or shared without explicit consent. Any editor who has a conflict of interest whether personal, financial, or professional must disclose it and refrain from handling the affected manuscript. In addition, editors oversee compliance with ethical standards for research involving human subjects, including obtaining informed consent, protecting confidentiality, and avoiding harm; studies involving vulnerable populations require formal approval from an institutional review board.

Author Responsibilities
Authors are required to submit wholly original work, to cite or quote all sources accurately, and to avoid any form of plagiarism including verbatim copying, unattributed paraphrasing, or self-plagiarism. Manuscripts exhibiting more than 30 percent similarity (excluding references) will be rejected. Authorship is limited to those who satisfy all ICMJE criteria: substantial contributions to study design or data analysis, drafting or revising the manuscript critically, approving the final version, and accepting accountability for all aspects of the work. Practices such as ghost authorship or guest authorship are unacceptable, and disputes over authorship will be resolved through institutional mediation. Authors must present accurate data, retain raw datasets for at least five years after publication, and must not fabricate, falsify, or selectively report results. All financial, institutional, or personal relationships that might influence research outcomes must be disclosed, and funding sources must be explicitly acknowledged.

Reviewer Responsibilities
Reviewers must provide objective, unbiased assessments focused on enhancing scholarly rigor and clarity, without resorting to personal criticism. They must maintain strict confidentiality regarding manuscript content and may not use privileged information for personal gain. Reviewers are expected to complete their evaluations within the agreed timeframe or inform the editors promptly of any delays.

Handling Misconduct
SDLR investigates any allegations of plagiarism, data fabrication, or other unethical practices, regardless of when they are reported. Concerns may be submitted anonymously through the journal’s ethics portal. Proven minor misconduct, such as unattributed text reuse, will result in a warning and a requirement to revise the manuscript. Intermediate misconduct, such as redundant submissions, leads to immediate rejection and a submission ban of one to three years. Severe misconduct, including data fraud, will trigger article retraction, a public notice, and notification of the authors’ institutions.

Post-Publication Corrections
When errors, omissions, or ethical violations are discovered after publication, SDLR issues corrections, retractions, or expressions of concern. Retracted articles remain accessible but are clearly watermarked with the reason for retraction.

Intellectual Property and Licensing
All SDLR content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, permitting non-commercial reuse with proper attribution. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the exclusive right of first publication.

Complaints and Appeals
Authors who wish to appeal an editorial decision may submit a formal rebuttal to the Editor-in-Chief within 30 days. Appeals are evaluated by an independent ethics committee, whose decision is final.

By adhering to these principles, Siyasah Dusturiyah: State Law Review promotes trust in scholarly publishing and advances the study of constitutional and legal scholarship. For further guidance, please consult the COPE Core Practices.