Smart: Journal of Criminal Law Review and Analysis (SCrim) is resolutely committed to maintaining the highest standards of academic integrity, intellectual rigor, and transparent scholarly conduct. To ensure the unimpeachable quality of its publications, SCrim strictly adheres to the core practices and guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The following ethical framework delineates the fiduciary and professional obligations of all parties involved in the publication process, including authors, peer reviewers, and the editorial board.

I. Duties and Warrants of the Authors

• Originality and Plagiarism: Authors must warrant that their submitted manuscripts are entirely original works of scholarship. Where the work or words of others have been utilized, they must be appropriately cited or quoted in strict accordance with the stipulated academic citation style. Plagiarism in any form ranging from uncredited paraphrase to self-plagiarism constitutes a severe breach of professional ethics and is grounds for immediate desk rejection.

• Concurrent and Redundant Publication: Authors shall not submit the same manuscript, or essentially the same research, to more than one journal concurrently. Submitting a previously published paper or a paper actively under consideration elsewhere represents actionable unethical behavior.

• Authorship and Attribution: Authorship must be rigorously limited to those individuals who have made a substantive and material contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All active contributors must be listed as co-authors, while those who have participated in non-substantive aspects of the research should be formally acknowledged. The corresponding author bears the responsibility of ensuring that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript prior to submission.

• Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest: All authors are strictly required to disclose any financial, professional, or personal conflicts of interest that might be construed as influencing the analytical framework, findings, or interpretation of their manuscript. Funding sources subsidizing the research must be explicitly acknowledged.

• Fundamental Errors in Published Work: Should an author discover a significant error or material inaccuracy in their own published work, it is their affirmative obligation to promptly notify the journal's editorial board and cooperate fully to issue an erratum, corrigendum, or, if necessary, a formal retraction.

II. Duties and Responsibilities of Peer Reviewers

• Contribution to Editorial Decisions: Peer review is the bedrock of the academic publishing process. Reviewers assist the editorial board in making informed publication decisions and serve a vital role in elevating the scholarly merit of the manuscript through constructive, rigorous critique.

• Standards of Objectivity: Reviews must be conducted with absolute objectivity. Personal criticism of the author is categorically inappropriate. Referees must articulate their evaluations clearly, buttressed by sound supporting arguments and relevant jurisprudential or statutory references.

• Confidentiality: Any manuscript received for review is a privileged document. Reviewers must treat the material with strict confidentiality and must not share, discuss, or utilize the unpublished data, arguments, or conceptual frameworks contained therein without the express written consent of the author.

• Promptness and Recusal: A selected referee who feels unqualified to review the legal or empirical research reported in a manuscript, or who knows that a prompt review will be impossible, must immediately notify the editor and recuse themselves from the review process. Furthermore, reviewers must recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships with any of the authors or associated institutions.

III. Duties and Prerogatives of the Editorial Board

• Publication Decisions and Fiduciary Duty: The Editor-in-Chief of SCrim exercises exclusive authority and bears final responsibility for determining which of the articles submitted to the journal shall be published. This decision is unequivocally guided by the policies of the journal's editorial board, the merit of the work, its relevance to the journal’s focus and scope, and prevailing legal constraints regarding libel, copyright infringement, and academic fraud.

• Fair Play and Non-Discrimination: Editors shall continuously evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their intellectual and academic merit, without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

• Anonymity and Blind Review: The editorial staff will take all reasonable, standard precautions to preserve the integrity of the double-blind peer review process, ensuring that the identities of the authors are shielded from the reviewers, and vice versa.

• Handling Allegations of Misconduct: In cases of alleged or proven academic misconduct, fraudulent publication, or plagiarism, the publisher, in close collaboration with the Editor-in-Chief, will take all appropriate measures to clarify the situation and amend the article in question. This includes the prompt publication of an erratum, clarification, or, in the most severe cases, the complete retraction of the implicated work.