Acta Judicial Journal

Presentation

Acta Judicial is entrusted with the purpose of promoting the research of the Spanish law. Under the auspices of the National College of Lawyers of the Administration of Justice, Patron of the Foundation of the Spanish Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation and member of the General Codification Commission, the journal publishes scientific research articles regarding any discipline of the legal sciences that are primarily related to Spanish law.

Acta Judicial is intended to be a privileged platform for the creation of legal knowledge, influencing the creative and innovative legal analysis and offering diagnoses and solutions to be applied to the challenges that the State of Law has to permanently face.

Theme and scope

Acta Judicial promote legal research and analysis regarding Spanish law. The Journal is open to all types of doctrinal work related to public and private law, both in its substantive and procedural perspective. National and international scope are both applicable if it brings a clear link to Spanish Law.

Comparative legal analysis shall consider and proportionate both Spanish and international legal system. At the same time, Acta judicial may provide a proper framework for reflection of technical studies on new technologies and cybersecurity that have application, incidence or influence on Spanish legal system.

Open Access Policy

Acta Judicial provides and immediate access to its whole content free of charges.

The articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International: No commercial use of the original work or derivative works are permitted (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

They may be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly displayed, if:

1. The authorship and the original source of its publication is cited (journal, publisher and URL of the reseach work). Which corresponds to the "by"
2. They are not used for commercial purposes. Which corresponds to the "nc"
3. If the research work is transformed or modified it cannot be legally distributed. What corresponds to the "nd".
4. The existence and specifications of this license of use are mentioned.

The authors authorize the reproduction and public communication of the full texts of their articles for the purpose of their inclusion in the Dialnet database, as well as in others necessary to guarantee the impact of the research works.

Self-archiving and conservation

Acta Judicial uses the LOCKSS system to create an archiving system distributed among collaborating libraries, allowing them to create permanent journal archives for conservation and restoration purposes. It is implemented in OJS version 3.2, the archives  are stored at the time of publication in both the institutional and OJS repository.

LOCKSS stores and distributes magazine content to partner libraries through LOCKSS Publisher Manifest.

Costs and remuneration

The reception process or articles if free of charges. The Journal shall not charge any expenses to authors for that purpose or any other aspect regarding the publication process. Also, authors, reviewers or referees will not have economical compensation.

Privacy Statement

The author accepts to receive correspondence from the Journal regarding the publication process. The Journal may send to author invitation to participate as external evaluator of paperworks.

Rejected papers will be removed from the system, and will not be made available to third parties or used for any purpose.

Personal information will be used for the publishing process exclusively nor for any other purpose. Please be aware that the personal data introduce at articles may be treated as public information.

The exercise of the rights of access, rectification or suppression, limitation and opposition will be available through the website, and the registered author can modify their data or delete their author profile anytime. However, once a research work has been published, it cannot be deleted.

Cookies: this Website uses its own and third party activity files (cookies) to know information about the user's navigation, which can be deleted from the browser by the visitor. Cookies are files created in the user's browser to record their activity on the Website and allow them to enter as a registered author. If you do not want cookies to be generated during the navigation process, visitors may deactivate the corresponding option in their browser.

Own cookies: When the user enters the website, they shall fill in the registration form and get access to the authentication session as an author; This item serve to remember the author's access settings.

Third Party Cookies: Google Analytics collects information, for an indefinite period of time, on the number of visits, pages or sections visited, browsing time, sites visited before entering this page, details on the browsers used, in order to make statistical reports on website traffic, its total audience and the audience in a given advertising campaign.

Policy on plagiarism and redundant publications

All research contributions must be original. Authors will be solely responsible to meet these requirements. Plagiarism detection programs are used (to ensure their reliability, the names of the programs are not published).

Redundant or overlapping publications (articles whose content is "substantially" similar to another that is already published) are not allowed either. In these cases, the research work shall be rejected. A research work can be removed from the Journal after publication on this premises.

Plagiarism shall be understood as the total or partial unauthorized copy of another person's work or ideas, making it appear as one's own original work, without citing its origin and true author.

Code of ethics

Acta Judicial declares its adherence to the code of ethics proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which can be consulted at https://publicationethics.org/

Ethical principles

All articles published in Acta Judicial have been submitted to the policy and review criteria stated in the publication rules. Likewise, the journal establishes the following guidelines of behavior to which the Editorial Board, the evaluators and the authors are submitted, so any of those group of professionals can detect behaviors subject to responsibility:

Responsabilities of the Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is the governing body of Acta Judicial. It is up to the Board:

• To determine and inform authors, through the website, of the reception, evaluation, and publication procedures.
• To maintain transparent communication between its members, reviewers and users of the journal.
• To enforce the code of ethics.
• To decide on the publication or rejection of articles in case of discrepancy between the executive director and the editor, taking into account the evaluation standards established by the journal in the rules of publication.
• To resolve appeals by authors against the decision of the executive director and the editor in the case of ethical violations and malpractice.
• To resolve conflicts of interest that may arise when they affect, jointly, both the executive director and the editor.

If the conflict of interest is related to a member of the Editorial Board, the affected member shall not intervene in the decision making process.

It is understood that there is a conflict of interest, for example, when there has been some form of intervention in the research of the submitted article, when there is a relationship of kinship (consanguinity or affinity), friendship or manifest enmity with the authors.

Responsabilities of journal's executive director

• The Executive Director must allow communication between journal users and the editorial board, and that the deadlines set out in the publication rules are met.
• The Executive Director must provide the procedures and all relevant information to the editorial board and authors, in order to contribute to the reception, evaluation, editing and publication of the journal's contents.
• The Executive Director, together with the Editor, will decide on the publication or rejection of articles, taking into account the evaluation standards established by the journal.
• The Executive Director is entitle to decide in the event of a conflict of interest between parties involved in the publication process. If the conflict affects the executive director, it will be resolved by the Editor.

Responsabilities of the Editor

• The Editor is responsible for managing the publication cycle of an article and for communication with authors at each stage of the cycle.
• The Editor shall guarantee the confidentiality of the editorial and academic evaluation process.
• The Editor, together with the Executive Director, shall decide on the publication or rejection of articles, taking into account the evaluation standards established by the journal.
• The Editor is entitle to decide to decide in the event of a conflict of interest affecting the Executive director.
• The Editor shall receive complaints of malpractice made in articles and will carry out the verification of these complaints and, after evaluation, shall communicate any decision to the editorial board.

Authors' Responsabilities

• Authors must guarantee that their articles are original and its content have been obtained ethically, without committing fraud or scientific plagiarism. They are solely responsible for the intellectual work presented.
• Once authors have sent their articles to Acta Judicial, they cannot send them to any other entity until the article has been expressly rejected or has been published; nor should they send previously published articles to Acta Judicial. A work shall be considered previously published, in printed or electronic form and in any language, when one of the following situations occurs:

1. When the full text has been published.
2. When extensive fragments of previously published materials are part of the text sent to the Journal.
3. When the work submitted to the Journal forms part of the contents of reports published extensively or in full.

• Authors must strictly follow the publication rules determined by the editorial board.
• Authors will send the article through the Journal's website, according to the guidelines established in the publication rules.
• The journal only allows authors to have less than 20% of self-citations in the body of the article and no more than 10% of own work in the references.
• They must respect the deadlines set for responses throughout the evaluation process.
• The sources cited in the article must be adequately acknowledged. Authors should cite publications that have influenced the substance of the submitted article. Information obtained privately cannot be used without the express permission of the source.
• Only the person who has contributed significantly to the article has the status of author. Co-authors must also agree with the publication of the article.
• It is the authors' obligation to declare sources of funding, projects that support the research, and to disclose conflicts of interest.
• In case of correction of names or changes in the institutional affiliation of any author, the author in charge of the submission must inform Acta Judicial before the end of the peer review process.
• When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in the published work, they must immediately notify the journal's editor and cooperate in correcting the error or retracting it.

Responsabilities of Reviewers

• The evaluators undertake to notify the Editor of any unethical conduct of the authors and to point out all the elements that may be grounds for refusing publication of the articles.
• Comply with the ethical behaviors established by the journal in its Review Policy.
• Any inside information or ideas obtained through the peer review process must be confidential and will not be used for personal gain of any kind.
• Peer reviewers will refrain from evaluating articles if they have a conflict of interest, and will inform the Editor accordingly.

Reporting of ethical violations and malpractice

Acta Judicial will admit complaints of violations of the code of ethics and malpractice in published articles. Complaints must set out the facts and present documentary evidence in this regard. Such complaints, which may not be anonymous, must be sent to the e-mail address, which is not part of the structure of the journal. The complaint will be sent exclusively to the editor, who will treat it as confidential. Once the complaint has been received, the editor will set in motion a mechanism for rigorously verifying the facts denounced, and will inform the author, who may present clarifications or explanations about this regard. The final decision shall be taken jointly by the Editor and the Executive Director. In case of disagreement, the Editorial Board will resolve it. Against the decision of the Editor and the Executive Director, the author may appeal to the Editorial Board.

Comunication of complaints

Complaints against Acta Judicial, its staff, the Editorial Board, the Editor or the Executive Director, may be submitted to the Illustrious National College of Lawyers for the Administration of Justice, either by registered letter to its postal address or by e-mail.

The complainant must identify himself, so that the Illustrious National College of Lawyers for the Administration of Justice can request further information. Filing a complaint implies the acceptance of the rules about data protection established by the Illustrious National College of Lawyers of the Administration of Justice. Once the complaining process has been completed, claimant´s personal data shall be deleted and cancelled.

All complaints, formally received, shall be decided by the Executive Board of the Illustrious National College of Lawyers of the Administration of Justice, after hearing all interested parties. This external entity may take the necessary corrective measures to resolve the complaint. All decisions shall be communicated to the interested party.

Discussions on the articles

Acta Judicial allows discussion of articles, through letters to the Editor. It is recognized authors right of reply, which will be also published at Acta Judicial. In order to admit the debate, it will be necessary to identify oneself properly.

Gender Policy

The journal's gender policy encourages authors to use inclusive and non-sexist language in their articles. In this sense, it will be preferable to use inclusive terms of both genders, e.g., person instead of man or woman.

Advertising Policy

Acta Judicial does not promote any kind of advertising neither related to the editorial process or linked to content, reader behaviour or displayed at random.