Research integrity, authorship and publication ethics
Updated 25 October 2026 · Contact info@thelegalgazette.org
Scope and author responsibility
TLG Open Scholarship publishes legal academic articles, case comments, research notes, reports and clearly labelled commentary. Authors must present accurate, balanced arguments and distinguish evidence, interpretation and opinion. Describe methods, source selection, limitations and legal currency. Do not fabricate, falsify, distort evidence or selectively omit material findings. Check primary authorities and quotations personally. Formatting tools do not verify the truth or current precedential status of a claim.
Authorship and contributions
List people who made substantial contributions and can accept responsibility for the work. Record actual contributions, preferably using relevant CRediT roles. Obtain all authors’ agreement to the submission and accepted version. Do not use guest, gift or ghost authorship. Changes to authorship require an explanation and agreement of affected authors, subject to editorial review. Institutions may be asked to help resolve disputes. A submitter’s declaration records their representation; it is not independent verification of every co-author’s consent.
Originality and prior work
Credit sources, quote accurately and identify reused text, translations, preprints and related publications. Disclose concurrent submission and seek editorial agreement before co-publication. Contextual quotations and properly disclosed reuse are assessed on their merits; software matches alone do not prove plagiarism. Do not misrepresent reused or AI-generated work as original scholarship.
Funding and competing interests
State funding, grant references and sponsor involvement, or expressly state that there was no external funding. Disclose relevant financial and non-financial relationships, including connections to TLG, editors or reviewers. Identify writing assistance and acknowledgements accurately. Editors and reviewers must disclose conflicts and recuse themselves where independence is compromised. Owner-authored or editor-authored work needs independent handling; no claim of independent peer review is made merely because the system recorded an approval.
Ethics and data
For human participants, interviews, personal records or animal research, explain applicable approval, consent and safeguards with authentic references. Explain non-applicability for doctrinal desk research. Protect identities and confidential or legally restricted records. Provide lawful materials and data access or explain restrictions; openness never requires breaching consent, privilege or copyright. Distinguish prespecified and later exploratory analyses where relevant.
AI and assistance
AI cannot be an author. Disclose tools and their actual uses. Generative tools must not substitute for the author’s original analysis or be used to invent facts, cases, citations or data. Minor language assistance must preserve meaning and be disclosed where material. Authors remain accountable. Automated writing observations do not establish AI authorship. Editors must consider evidence and the author’s response rather than treat a score as conclusive.
Concerns and corrections
Report suspected errors or misconduct at info@thelegalgazette.org with the publication URL and evidence. TLG reviews concerns confidentially as appropriate, seeks author responses and may request corrections, escalate to institutions, withdraw or remove material with reasons. Appeals and reconsideration use /complaints. Certificates record publication, not a certification of research integrity.