Ethics Policy

Step 1: Preliminary Review In this round a panel which is constituted for the purpose, will prima facie decide whether an article is suitable enough to qualify for the second round. The articles are checked for the following:

• Relevance of the topic of research
• Plagiarism Check through Anti Plagiarism software Turnitin
• Grammar, Language and Sentence framing
• Quality of references used.

Any article having more than 15% similarity is rejected summarily. There is a zero-tolerance policy towards plagiarism in the publication. Manuscripts are screened for plagiarism before, during, and after publication, and if found plagiarized, they will be rejected at any stage of processing.

Step 2: Blind Peer Review Those articles which pass the 1st Round are then reviewed by Expert Peer Reviewers. At this stage the anonymity of the authorship of the article is strictly maintained to prevent any possibility of bias. The Reviewers check the articles for the criteria mentioned in Round 1 and for the following additional criteria of

• Relevance to contemporary legal research
• Logical flow of idea and arguments
• Academic merit
• Literary merit
• Originality of thought
• Contribution to legal academia

The Reviewers are given a window of 30 days within 30 days of receiving the articles. We do try to however request the editors to submit their reviews as quickly as possible. The Reviewers recommend whether an article should be accepted as it is, revised or rejected. If an article is found to be lacking in academic merit, then reviewers provide their positive expert comments so that the author may improve upon the article.

Step 3: After the recommendations of the Reviewers are received by the Editorial Committee then a final decision is taken whether to accept the article or not. Those articles which are found to be needing revision are sent back to the Authors along with the comments of the Reviewers to modify the article suitably. Articles which pass all 3 steps will be then recommended by the Editorial Committee for publication in the Journal.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author/s in the publication are their personal views and do not reflect the views of the Editor or the Department of Travel and Tourism, Vishwakarma University, Pune