Code of ethics of the European Journal of Privacy Law & Technology (EJPLT)
The European Journal of Privacy Law & Technology (EJPLT) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal in open access and its Code of ethics complies with the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors introduced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), with particular regard to the
1. Duties and responsibilities of the Publisher
The publisher encourages and is aware of research into peer-review and reassesses journal processes in the light of new findings.
He works to persuade his authors to provide them with appropriate resources, guidance from experts (e.g. designers, lawyers, academics), and adequate training to perform their role professionally and raise the quality of their journal.
The publisher supports initiatives designed to reduce academic misconduct and to educate researchers about publication ethics. He assesses the effects of his journal policy on author and reviewer behavior and revises policy, as required, to encourage responsible behavior and discourage misconduct.
The relationship between the Publisher and the Editor in chief/Director of the Journal is regulated in an agreement. The terms of this Code of Ethics comply with the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
He has systems in place to detect falsified data (e.g. plagiarised text) and bases decisions about the journal house style on relevant evidence of factors that raise the quality of reporting (e.g. adopting structured abstracts). He supports authors whose copyright has been breached or who have been the victims of plagiarism.
He has policies and systems in place to ensure that commercial considerations do not affect editorial decisions (e.g. advertising departments should operate independently from editorial departments).
The relationship between the Editor in chief, the Scientific Committee, Referees, and the Editorial Team is firmly based on the principle of editorial independence.
2. Duties and responsibilities of the Editor in chief (Director), the Vice-Director, the Referees and the Scientific Committee
All the contributions publisher in EJPLT issues (articles, comments on decisions, use cases annd focus papers) go through a double-blind review process carried out by the Referees of the EJPLT.
Referees are Full and Associate Professors, chosen alternatively by the Director on the basis of their expertise. They are sector specialists, expressly indicated in the EJPLT Board, who verify articles' suitability for publication on the EJPLT (peer review). The Referees are required to fill in the evaluation form in full autonomy from the Journal Direction.
After the peer review, the EJPLT Director may wish to verify the peer reviews of the contributions submitted and can reject contributions without peer review based on quality, originality, and significance, or ask for further review.
In exceptional and justified cases, the Director take the responsibility for publication or non-publication of the contributions.
News goes through a single-blind review process carried out by the scientific committee of the EJPLT to verify compliance with the templates and standards of citation indicated in the Author Guidelines section. News is uploaded only on the EJPLT portal but not in the EJPLT issues.
Contributions can be written in English, Spanish, French or Italian.
The Director and the Vice-Director, the Referees and the Scientific Committee, each of them for their respective competencies, are required to revise and choose articles, comments on decisions, use cases, focus papers, or news (in general called 'contributions') without distinction of race, sex, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, the scientific, academic or political orientation of the authors.
The Referees and the Scientific Committee examine and rate the contribution based on the following criteria, depending on the type of contribution: impact of the research, objectives, originality, maturity, methodology, clarity, and references.
If the Director and the Vice-Director, the Referees or the Scientific Committee detect or receive reports about errors or inaccuracies, conflict of interest, or plagiarism in a published contributions, it will promptly notify the Author and the Publisher and will take the necessary actions to clarify the issue and, if necessary, will withdraw the contribution or publish a retraction.
The Submission process is illustrated in detail in the specific section of the EJPLT website.
3. Duties and responsibilities of the Editorial Team
The coordinator and the members of the Editorial Team, as well as all the Authors, have to follow the 'Author's Guidelines' process published in the specific section of the EJPLT website. Furthermore, the Coordinator of the Editorial team has to supervise the editorial team and the other authors in carrying out their activities.
The Editorial Team and the other Authors are required to declare that they have drawn up an original work in its entirety and have duly cited all the texts used. If the work and/or words of other authors are used, these must be appropriately paraphrased and cited, or quoted.
The authorship of the work must be correctly attributed and all those who have made a significant contribution to the design, organization, realization, and re-elaboration of the research that underlies the contribution must be indicated as co-authors.
All Authors are required to explicitly state that there are no conflicts of interest that may have affected the results achieved or the proposed interpretations. The Authors must also indicate the possible funding Entity of the research and/or project from which the contribution arises.
Contribution under evaluation must not be submitted to other journals for publication.
When an Author identifies in a published article an error or a relevant inaccuracy, he/she must promptly inform the Editor in chief, and the Editorial Team Coordinator provides all the information to make the necessary corrections.
Authors' articles, comments on decisions, use case and focus papers go through a double-blind review process carried out by the Referees of the EJPLT, experts who verify articles' suitability for publication on the EJPLT (peer review process).
Authors' news goes through a single-blind review process carried out by the scientific committee of the EJPLT to verify compliance with the templates and standards of citation indicated in the Author Guidelines section.
4. Duties and responsibilities of the Referee
Through the peer-review procedure, the Referees assist the Director in making decisions on the proposed contributions, also supported by the Vice-Director, and can also suggest corrections and precautions to the Authors, to improve their contribution. If the Referees do not feel adequate to the proposed task or if they know they cannot read the works within the required time, they must promptly notify the Editor in chief.
Each text assigned for reading must be considered confidential. Therefore, these texts must not be discussed with other people without the explicit authorization of the Author.
The peer-review must be carried out objectively.
Each Referee must sign on the EJPLT portal to activate his/her personal account. The Referees are required to adequately justify the opinions expressed by filling in the relevant peer-review form available in their account or sent to them via email.
The Referees undertake to report to the Editor in chief any similarities or overlaps of the text received with other works known to them.
All confidential information or information obtained during the peer-review are confidential. The Referees are required not to accept acontributio for which there is a conflict of interest due to previous collaboration or competition with the author and/or his institution.
All communications to the EJPLT Board are made via email by writing to this email address.
5. Copyright and Creative Commons License
EJPLT is an Open Access Journal and the Authors do not bear any cost for the publication of their contributions on the Journal.
The copyright of the Issues is of the Publisher, while the intellectual property of the individual contributions remains with the authors, who grant the Publisher a license to publish their contributions.
Each Author receives, in a short time from the first publication and without charge, by the Publisher, as an extract, the PDF of his/her published contribution, in the final version published on a EJPLT issue.
EJPLT issues are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, International Licence CC-BY-NC-ND, which permits to copy and distribute the material for noncommercial (NC) purposes only, in any medium or format in unadapted form only (ND), and only so long as attribution is given from the Author. Derivative cotributions are allowed but must not be shared. All the details on the license are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Under these terms, Authors, immediately after publication and without the written permission of the Publisher, may (i) share, copy, redistribute, deposit and publicly display the published version (Version of Record) of their contribution in any medium or format; (ii) grant third parties to use the published contribution freely, in accordance with license conditions.
Authors may, for example, reproduce and distribute copies of their contributions during lectures or seminars, freely share the contribution in Open Access, also uploading them on websites, online archives, or repositories. In any case, the contributions have to be shared in the PDF version published in the EJPLT issue or through the indication a weblink to the published version on EJPLT.
Concerning the repository, authors are allowed to deposit their contributions in institutional or other repositories, such as: IRIS, ORCID, Research Gate, Academia.
In general, all the repositories are allowed with the only limit being that the integrity of the contributions has to be maintained, proper attribution is given to the Author(s) and EJPLT is recognised and cited as the source of the original publication of the work.
With regard the contributions in the submitted version and in the accepted version (Author Accepted Manuscript), authors are allowed to deposit them in institutional repositories, such as IRIS.
6. Archiving policy
The Journal contents are archived through Long-term preservation services in three National Library: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma, Biblioteca Nazionale 'Vittorio Emanuele' di Napoli, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.
Free access to the Issue at: www.ejplt.tatodpr.eu