EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the first issue of the third volume of the Sports Law, Policy & Diplomacy Journal. When we launched the Journal in early 2023, we stated that this would not be just a marathon, but an ultra-trail. We are extremely pleased to see the numerous submissions that have been sent from all around the world throughout the year, some of which are of exceptional quality and have successfully passed external double-blinded reviews, and they are featured in this issue.
This issue is an excellent representation of the potential of the Journal. We present five papers. The first paper focuses on the theoretical overview of Sports Law with an emphasis on specific Roman Law provisions, while the second paper concerns the development of sports policy in one specific and interesting country, the Republic of North Macedonia. We are extremely pleased to have two papers presented at the annual Sport&EU conference, organised this year at the University of Naples Federico II in Naples, Italy, on 30 June and 1 July. The papers deal with two highly interesting topics, one on sport facilities as drivers of environmental legacy and sustainability, while the second deals with the social analysis in the media coverage of sport. We conclude our issue with a paper that deals with a topic that is always interesting, as it is a review of doping in sports with a special focus on India.
The Sport&EU association, as a partner of the SLPD Journal, is of paramount importance due to its not just European but worldwide network of academics and practitioners, especially young scholars who are just starting their academic careers. The SLPD Journal will always have a special place for the good quality papers presented at the annual Sport&EU Conferences.
In the end, we must highlight that thanks to the quality work of the editorial board and the editors, as well as the overall quality of the papers, the Journal has been indexed in several databases. These include SURF (German Federal Institute of Sport Science - Bundesinstitut fur Sportwissenschaft), Idrottsforum.org (Malmö University, Sweden), HRČAK (Portal of Croatian Scientific and Professional Journals), HeinOnline, and ERIHPLUS (an index containing bibliographic information on academic journals in the humanities and social sciences - SSH). Our goal is to continue on this path and have the Journal indexed in other relevant databases.
The current edition of this journal once again showcases the richness of sports-related scholarship both within and outside the EU. In the end, we invite all who would like to publish with us to please submit an article. We look forward to receiving it.
Vanja Smokvina, Richard Parrish & Borja Garcia Garcia
Editors-in-Chief