EDITORIAL POLICY AND PROCESSES
1. Introduction
This document describes the editorial and review (quality control) processes of the RIDP (Revue Internationale de Droit Pénal, International Review of Penal Law), which is the primary publication medium and core scientific output of the International Association of Penal Law (AIDP, penal.org).
It seeks to contribute to the development of ideas, knowledge, and practices in the field of penal sciences. Combining international and comparative perspectives, the RIDP covers criminal law theory and philosophy, general principles of criminal law, special criminal law, criminal procedure, and international criminal law.
The RIDP is published twice a year. Typically, issues are linked to the Association’s core scientific activities, i.e. the AIDP conferences, Young Penalist conferences, world conferences or, every five years, the International Congress of Penal Law. Occasionally, issues will be dedicated to a single, topical scientific theme, validated by the Scientific Committee of the Association, comprising high-quality papers which have been either presented and discussed in small-scale expert colloquia or selected following an open call for papers. The RIDP is published in English only.
All contributions are subject to double-layered peer-review. The primary scientific and peer review responsibility for all issues lies with the designated Scientific Editor(s) of the journal issue. The additional scientific quality control is carried out by the Executive Committee of the Editorial Board, which itself may turn to the Committee of Reviewers for supplementary peer review.
2. Editorial & peer review (quality control) processes
2.1 Responsibility of the Scientific Editor towards the authors
The Scientific Editor, i.e. the editor(s) of each individual RIDP issue, is responsible for informing the authors of the editorial guidelines, which includes forwarding the Author guidelines and communicating the deadlines set forth for that issue. The Scientific Editor supervises that manuscripts are submitted by the authors on time, sets out the necessary deadlines accordingly, and assures peer review and overall scientific quality control.
The Scientific Editor of each RIDP issue has full academic responsibility for that issue. This entails that the Scientific Editor, firstly, reads the submitted articles in full and assesses their content on scientific merit. If needed, the Scientific Editor provides the author with comments for improvement and revision. If necessary, and in consultation with the Executive Committee of the Editorial Board, a reviewer with special expertise from the Committee of Reviewers or the Scientific Committee (COSCI) may be consulted for advice. Only those contributions that have been approved by the Scientific Editor as being of sufficient scientific quality (informative, correct, meaningful, intelligibly written etc.) should be forwarded to the journal’s Editorial Board. Secondly, this also entails that the Scientific Editor submits the manuscripts in conformity with the editorial procedures to the Editorial Board who will then perform an additional check on scientific quality, language, and format. If major changes are necessary, the Editorial Board will refer the manuscript back to the Scientific Editor attaching an outline of the necessary changes that should be made to the manuscript for it to be in conformity with the RIDP guidelines and expected quality. The Editorial board reserves the right to reject – in consultation with the Scientific Editor – any contribution not satisfactory adhering to the mentioned criteria.
For issues related to conferences, congresses or expert colloquia, initial peer assessment is in place through the processes of adoption of resolutions and discussion of reports or manuscripts amongst experts. The assessment of the resolutions as well as the discussion by experts in the field constitutes a sound first quality check. The editor shall document this process.
2.2 Responsibility of authors and guidelines to the authors
Individual authors are requested to submit their contributions to the Scientific Editor in the suggested format and in accordance with the Author guidelines. The Scientific Editor may ask authors to resubmit an article or contribution that is not carefully edited and formatted prior to submission as well as demand substantive improvements/revision of the text or refuse publication should it not be of sound scientific quality.
2.3 Supervising role of the Editorial Board of AIDP
The Editorial Board shall communicate editorial policies and standards as well as any changes to these policies to the scientific editors who will distribute these guidelines to the authors.
Once the full manuscript of an RIDP issue is submitted by the Scientific Editor to the Editorial Board, the Executive Committee of the Editorial Board (COEXREV) conducts a secondary check by discussing each issue in its midst and formulating a general opinion. The internal discussions and documents are kept confidential. If necessary, the COEXREV can consult a member of the Committee of Reviewers or the Scientific Committee with adequate expertise on the topic at hand for supplementary peer review or advice. The secretary of the COEXREV (Editorial Secretary) will communicate the general opinion of the COEXREV to the Scientific Editor.
The role of the COEXREV will thus be to discuss each journal issue and formulate a general position of the Editorial Board on that issue (standing for an extra quality control). This process will take no longer than 1 month. The outcome will be communicated to the Scientific Editor and, if necessary, also to the authors if revision at the individual level is necessary. Any questions related to editorial policy should be addressed to the Editorial Secretary (hannah.verbeke@ugent.be).