Publications Ethics

Jurnal Hukum Mimbar Justitia (JHMJ), published by Universitas Suryakancana, Cianjur, follows the publication ethics standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): the COPE Core Principles and the Code of Conduct for COPE Members (both published July 2026), together with COPE guidelines, flowcharts and position statements. These replace COPE's former Core Practices, which COPE retired in 2024.

This policy binds every party involved in the publication process: the publisher/journal manager, the editors, the reviewers and the authors. It applies alongside Indonesian law and national research-integrity rules, and alongside the journal's other policies (Peer Review Process, Plagiarism Policy, AI Policy, Copyright & License, Article Retraction & Withdrawal, and Article Processing Charge).

All decisions under this policy are guided by COPE's six Core Principles:

Accountability: JHMJ takes responsibility for its policies, procedures and decisions, and reviews and corrects them when needed.
Fairness, justice and equity: every author, reviewer and reader is treated impartially and consistently, regardless of background or region.
Integrity: everyone acts honestly and resists improper influence.
Rigour and accuracy: policies and decisions rest on sound method and proper documentation.
Stewardship: the scholarly record is created, preserved and, where necessary, corrected responsibly.
Transparency: policies, processes and decisions are visible and understandable to those affected.

Duties of the Publisher/Journal Manager

Universitas Suryakancana, as publisher, and the journal manager guarantee the editorial independence of JHMJ and the conditions for ethical publishing. The publisher/journal manager shall:

Guarantee editorial independence. Respect the editors' full authority over publication decisions and protect freedom of expression and scholarly debate. Business and commercial interests, including the Article Processing Charge (APC), waivers, advertising and institutional relationships, must never influence editorial decisions.
Be transparent. Publish and keep up to date clear information on the journal's scope, editorial board, peer review process, APC and waiver policy, open access policy, copyright and licence, AI policy, plagiarism policy, and retraction and withdrawal policy. Claims about indexing, accreditation and metrics must be accurate.
Provide training and resources. Ensure that the journal manager, editors and reviewers receive regular guidance on publication ethics, including COPE guidance and flowcharts.
Support the handling of misconduct. Support editors in investigating concerns before and after publication, cooperate with other journals, publishers and authors' institutions, and correct the literature where needed.
Preserve the scholarly record. Maintain the integrity of the version of record, assign persistent identifiers (DOI), ensure long-term digital preservation, and make every change to a published article transparent through a linked notice (correction, expression of concern or retraction).
Protect confidentiality and personal data. Protect personal data of authors, reviewers and research participants in line with Law No. 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection, and keep the editorial system secure.
Respect intellectual property. Apply the journal's licence consistently, and act on suspected breaches of copyright or other intellectual property rights.
Protect those who raise concerns. Ensure that anyone who reports a possible ethical breach in good faith is protected from retaliation.
Promote diversity and equity. Strive for diversity in the editorial board and reviewer pool, and equitable opportunities for authors from all institutions and regions.

Duties of the Editors

The Editor-in-Chief, assisted by the editorial board, is solely responsible for deciding which manuscripts are published, and must make that decision fairly, independently and on scholarly merit alone. Editors shall:

Decide on merit. Base every decision on the manuscript's originality, legal and methodological soundness, clarity, and relevance to the journal's scope, following the double-blind review described in the Peer Review Process. Editorial decisions are made without regard to the authors' ethnicity, religion, race, gender, nationality, institutional affiliation, political views or seniority.
Ensure fair and timely peer review. Screen every submission for similarity before review, send suitable manuscripts to at least two independent reviewers with relevant expertise, verify reviewers' identities and credentials, and reject reviewers suggested in bad faith.
Keep information confidential. Disclose information about a manuscript only to the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers and the publisher, as appropriate. Preserve the anonymity of authors and reviewers throughout the double-blind process.
Not misuse unpublished material. Never use unpublished material from a submitted manuscript in their own research without the author's written consent, and never upload manuscripts or review reports to public AI tools, in line with the journal's AI Policy.
Manage conflicts of interest. Recuse themselves from any manuscript in which they have a conflict of interest (see Conflict of Interest below), and hand it to another editor.
Avoid citation manipulation. Never require or pressure authors to cite the journal, the editors' own work, or any other work unless the citation is scientifically justified.
Consider legal requirements. Take account of the law on defamation, copyright infringement, personal data and confidentiality when deciding to publish, which is especially relevant to legal commentary on named persons, cases and institutions.
Act on ethical concerns. Respond to any complaint or suspicion of misconduct, before or after publication, following the procedure under Allegation of Research Misconduct and the relevant COPE flowcharts.
Correct the record. Publish corrections, expressions of concern or retractions promptly and transparently, following COPE's retraction guidelines (revised in 2025) and its guidance on expressions of concern, and the journal's Article Retraction & Withdrawal policy.
Allow appeals. Give authors a clear route to appeal an editorial decision (see Complaints and Appeals below).
Keep improving. Seek feedback from authors, reviewers and readers, and keep the journal's policies and editorial processes under review.

Duties of the Reviewers

Reviewers help the editors reach sound decisions and help authors improve their work; they must do so objectively, confidentially and on time, following COPE's Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers. Reviewers shall:

Accept only what they can do well. Agree to review only manuscripts within their expertise that they can assess on time, and tell the editor promptly if they cannot, so that another reviewer can be found.
Keep the manuscript confidential. Treat the manuscript and all related material as confidential documents. Do not share, discuss or keep copies of it, and do not upload any part of it to public AI tools, as stated in the journal's AI Policy.
Do the assessment themselves. Carry out the substantive assessment personally, and do not pass the review to a colleague or student without the editor's permission. AI may be used only to polish the language of a report the reviewer wrote, without inserting manuscript content.
Be objective and constructive. Judge the work, not the author. Avoid personal criticism, explain every view with supporting arguments or references, and assess in particular the originality of the idea, the accuracy of the legal theory and sources used, and the soundness of the method.
Respect the double-blind process. Do not try to identify the authors and do not contact them directly. If they recognise the authors, they tell the editor.
Point out sources and overlaps. Identify relevant published work that is not cited, and tell the editor of any substantial similarity or overlap with other published or submitted work.
Report ethical concerns. Notify the editor confidentially of any suspected plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, undisclosed AI-generated content, or ethical problem in the research, without investigating it personally.
Declare conflicts of interest. Decline to review, or consult the editor, when they have a conflict of interest with the authors, their institution, the funder, or the subject (see Conflict of Interest below).
Not exploit privileged information. Never use ideas or information obtained through peer review for personal advantage, and never ask authors to cite the reviewer's own work unless it is genuinely needed.

Duties of the Authors

Authors are fully responsible for the originality, accuracy and integrity of everything they submit. Authors shall:

Submit original work. Submit only work that is their own, has not been published before, and is not under consideration elsewhere. Simultaneous submission, duplicate or redundant publication, and undisclosed recycling of their own earlier text are not allowed.
Avoid plagiarism. Properly acknowledge all words, ideas and data taken from others. Manuscripts above the similarity threshold set in the Peer Review Process (20%) are returned for revision; plagiarism in any form is handled under the Plagiarism Policy.
Report accurately. Present the research honestly and in enough detail for others to verify it. Fabrication, falsification and selective or misleading presentation of sources are misconduct.
Cite legal sources precisely. Check every statute (with its number and year), court decision, treaty and official document against the official source, and cite it precisely.
Respect research ethics. For empirical legal research involving people (interviews, surveys, observation, case files), obtain informed consent, protect participants' identity and personal data in line with Law No. 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection, and state ethics approval where required.
Keep their data available. Be ready to provide the editor with the underlying data, interview records or documents on request, and keep them for a reasonable period after publication.
Assign authorship correctly. List as authors only those who made a substantial intellectual contribution and accept responsibility for the work, and acknowledge other contributors. Gift, guest and ghost authorship, and the purchase or sale of authorship (including through paper mills or other third parties), are prohibited. Any change to the author list after submission requires the written agreement of all authors and the editor's approval.
Disclose AI use. Never list AI as an author, and disclose any AI use beyond basic spell-checking in a "Declaration of AI Use" section before the References, as required by the journal's AI Policy.
Disclose funding and conflicts of interest. State all sources of funding and any conflict of interest in the manuscript (see Conflict of Interest below).
Take part in peer review in good faith. Respond to reviewers' comments fully and within the given time, and never suggest fake or conflicted reviewers.
Correct their own errors. Tell the editor promptly if they find a significant error in their submitted or published work, and cooperate in publishing a correction or retraction.

Allegation of Research Misconduct

JHMJ investigates every credible allegation of research or publication misconduct, before or after publication, following COPE flowcharts and the presumption of innocence until the facts are established.

What counts as misconduct

Fabrication: inventing data, interview results, sources, statutes or court decisions.
Falsification: manipulating data, sources or findings, or misrepresenting what a legal source says.
Plagiarism: using others' words, ideas or data without proper attribution, including disguised paraphrase.
Duplicate or redundant publication, and simultaneous submission.
Authorship misconduct: gift, guest or ghost authorship, and authorship bought or supplied by paper mills or other third parties.
Peer review manipulation: fake reviewers, review rings, or breaches of review confidentiality.
Citation manipulation: coercive or reciprocal citation arrangements.
Undisclosed AI-generated content or undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Ethical violations in research involving people, including lack of consent or breach of personal data.

How to raise a concern

Anyone may raise a concern, whether author, reviewer, reader or institution, and may do so anonymously. Concerns should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at jhmj.fh@unsur.ac.id with the article title, a description of the concern, and any supporting evidence. Concerns are judged on their evidence, not on who raised them. Anyone who raises a concern in good faith is protected from retaliation; knowingly false or malicious allegations may themselves be treated as misconduct.

Procedure

Record and acknowledge. The Editor-in-Chief records the concern confidentially and acknowledges receipt.
Preliminary assessment. An editor with no conflict of interest checks whether the concern is specific and supported by evidence, using similarity reports, the original sources and the editorial record. Unsupported concerns are closed with a short reason.
Ask the authors. The editor sets out the concern and evidence to the corresponding author and asks for a written explanation within a fixed deadline. All authors are informed.
Decide or escalate. If the explanation resolves the concern, the case is closed. If not, or if the authors do not respond, the editor contacts the authors' institution and asks it to investigate. Cases are not left open indefinitely.
Act on the outcome. The editor applies one of the outcomes below and informs the authors, and where relevant the complainant and the institution.
Keep records. All correspondence and decisions are documented and kept confidential.

Possible outcomes

Outcome	When it is used
No action	The concern is not supported by the evidence.
Rejection	Misconduct is confirmed before publication.
Correction	An honest error affects part of a published article but not its main conclusions.
Expression of concern	The evidence is inconclusive, or an investigation is under way and will take time. It is an interim notice, later replaced by a correction, a retraction or a closing note.
Retraction	The findings or arguments are unreliable, or the article involves plagiarism, duplicate publication, fabrication, falsification, authorship manipulation, undisclosed AI-generated content, or a serious ethical breach.

Every notice is published as a separate, citable item linked to the original article, states its reason, and leaves the original article online and clearly marked, as set out in COPE's retraction guidelines and the journal's Article Retraction & Withdrawal policy.

Sanctions

Depending on the seriousness of the case, the Editorial Board may also inform the authors' institution, and bar the authors from submitting to JHMJ for a period it decides. Sanctions are proportionate and are recorded with their reasons.

Conflict of Interest

Everyone involved in publishing in JHMJ must disclose any interest that could influence, or appear to influence, their judgement. A conflict of interest does not by itself bar publication or participation; failing to disclose it does.

Types of conflict

Financial: funding, employment, consultancy fees, honoraria, or shares connected to the subject of the manuscript.
Professional: acting as advocate, legal counsel, expert witness or judge in a case the manuscript analyses, or taking part in drafting a law, regulation or policy the manuscript assesses.
Institutional: affiliation with a party, government body or organisation whose interests are directly affected by the manuscript.
Personal: family ties, close friendship, rivalry or dispute with an author, reviewer or editor.
Intellectual: a strong prior commitment to a position that could prevent fair assessment.

Disclosure by role

Authors declare all funding and any conflict of interest in a "Conflict of Interest" statement in the manuscript. If there is none, they state: "The author(s) declare no conflict of interest."
Reviewers decline the invitation, or consult the editor first, if they work at the same institution as an author, have collaborated or published with an author in the past three years, have a personal relationship or dispute with an author, or have a professional interest in the case or law discussed.
Editors do not handle manuscripts in which they have a conflict of interest. Manuscripts submitted by the Editor-in-Chief, editorial board members or the journal manager go through the same double-blind review, handled by another editor; the submitting editor has no access to the review records or the decision.
The publisher/journal manager ensures that the APC, waivers, sponsorship and institutional relationships have no bearing on editorial decisions; waiver decisions are made separately from the editorial assessment.

Undisclosed conflicts

A conflict of interest discovered after submission or publication is handled under Allegation of Research Misconduct. Depending on its effect on the work, the outcome may be a published correction of the disclosure statement, an expression of concern, or retraction.

Complaints and Appeals

Authors may appeal an editorial decision, and anyone may complain about the journal's handling of a manuscript or about this policy, by writing to jhmj.fh@unsur.ac.id.

Appeals must explain why the decision should be reconsidered, with reference to the reviewers' reports. An editor who was not involved in the original decision reviews the appeal and may seek an additional reviewer. The outcome of the appeal is final.
Complaints about the editors' conduct are handled by the Editor-in-Chief. Complaints about the Editor-in-Chief are referred to the publisher, Universitas Suryakancana.
Complaints are acknowledged, handled confidentially and within a reasonable time, and answered in writing with the reasons for the decision.

Review of this Policy

This policy is reviewed every year, and sooner when COPE issues new guidance, to keep it aligned with the COPE Core Principles, the COPE Code of Conduct, and Indonesian law.