Ethical Principles

EU and comparative law issues and challenges series (ECLIC) is a journal that contains series of papers presented at ECLIC conference(s). Journal primary publishes papers presented at the ECLIC conference(s), but it remains open to publish papers submitted independently in the special issue of the Journal. EU and comparative law issues and challenges series (ECLIC) is published and owned by Faculty of Law, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek. Journal primary publishes scientific papers, and sometimes (if the editorial board estimates that it contributes to the filed of law) professional papers. The focus of this series is on publication of fully blind peer-reviewed papers.

1. Responsibilities of Editors

  1. Editors are responsible to readers, and should learn about their needs and interests.
  2. Editors are responsible for the editorial content of the journal.
  3. Editors are responsible for establishing the policies for authorship and submission of manuscripts to the journal.
  4. Editors are responsible for review process.
  5. Editors are responsible to authors for maintaining the integrity and confidentiality of the author’s work while that work is being evaluated for publication.
  6. Editors are responsible to take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred.
  7. Editors work to improve quality of manuscripts and quality of research in the field.
  8. Editors have editorial independence and work to ensure that authors have editorial freedom.
  9. Editors do not have personal, financial, or other relationships linked in any way to any of their responsibilities as an editor.
  10. Editors are responsible to assess and revise the journal policies regularly to include potential new developments and recommendations from COPE.
  11. Editors are responsible to publish any necessary corrections, clarifications and retractions related to the published articles.

2. Responsibilities of Authors

  1. Authors must confirm that submitted manuscript is original and that submitted manuscript has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration. If there are overlaps of the content they must to acknowledge.
  2. Authors are responsible to provide accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript
  3. Authors are responsible to declare any potential conflicts of interest.
  4. Authors are responsible to notify promptly the journal editor if a significant error in their publication occurs. .
  5. Papers accepted for publication or already published in ECLIC  may be published by the author(s) in other publications only with proper notice of its previous publication in ECLIC.

3. Responsibilities of reviewers

  1. Reviewers' are responsible in decision-making process by providing objective written, unbiased feedback in a timely manner.
  2. Reviewers' are responsible to point out relevant published work which is not yet cited.
  3. Reviewers' are responsible to be confidential of any information supplied by the editor or author.
  4. Reviewers' are responsible to avoid personal comments or personal criticism.
  5. Reviewers' are responsible to alert the editors about any potential personal or financial conflict of interest and declining to review when a possibility of a conflict exists.

4. Responsibilities of Publisher

Faculty of law Osijek, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek as publisher is responsible to:

  1. Help the editorial process of journal editors, especially those related to the independence of Editors, research ethics, authorship, transparency and integrity, peer review process, role of editorial team, appeals and complains.
  2. Publish the journal.
  3. Advocate for the integrity of the academic record and article publications.
  4. Publish any necessary corrections, clarifications and retractions related to the published articles.
  5. Take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of papers where research misconduct has occurred.

5. Publication Frequency

1 number per year (in June)

6. Peer Review Process

All submission to the ECLIC journal are initially reviewed by one of the editors. At this stage manuscripts may be rejected without peer review if it is not of high enough quality or not relevant to the journal.  Contributions that are not initially rejected go under fully blinded double-peer review process from reviewers' that are experts in the field. All reviewed articles are treated confidentially prior to their publication. 

Positively assessed papers are categorized in accordance with the Guidelines for Editing and Formatting Journals issued by the Ministry of Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia: see details on the peer review process guidelines.

7. Copyright Notice

EU and comparative law issues and challenges series (ECLIC) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Papers in this series you can copy and redistribute in any medium or format. You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. You may not use the material for commercial purposes.

Authors retain the copyright on the papers published in the Journal, but grant the right of first publication to the Journal. Papers accepted for publication or already published in ECLIC may be published by the author(s) in other publications only with proper notice of its previous publication in ECLIC.

8. Archiving

EU and comparative law issues and challenges series (ECLIC) fully indexed in the archive of HeinOnline in the event a journal is no longer published the current site remains available. Moreover, available on Open Journal System, OJS is in the PKP Preservation Network, and they use Method LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe). Finally, EU and comparative law issues and challenges series (ECLIC) is part of HRČAK is the central portal of Croatian scientific journals. HRČAK offers the access to the journals following the Open Access Initiative. This portal was developed with the support of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports (nowadays Ministry of Science and Education), developed and maintained by the SRCE - University of Zagreb, University Computing Centre and was initiated by the Croatian Information and Documentation Society.

9. Dealing with unethical behavior

Misconduct and unethical behavior can be brought to the attention of the editor and publisher at any time, by anyone. Whoever informs the editor or publisher of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence in order for an investigation to be initiated. All allegations should be taken seriously and treated in the same way, until a successful decision or conclusion is reached.

Editors will consider retracting a publication if:

  • there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error)
  • have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing,
  • it constitutes plagiarism
  • it reports unethical research

Editors will issue an expression of concern if:

  • they receive inconclusive evidence of research or publication misconduct by the authors
  • there is evidence that the findings are unreliable but the authors’ institution will not investigate the case
  • they believe that an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been, or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive
  • an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time

Journal editors will issue a correction if:

  • a small portion of an otherwise reliable publication proves to be misleading (especially because of honest error)
  • the author / contributor list is incorrect (i.e. a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included)

Notices of retraction will be published promptly to minimize harmful effects from misleading publications and will be linked to the retracted article by clearly identifying it.

Download Ethical Standards here.