Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Scholarly Contribution • Transparency • Accountability

Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Sinergi International Journal of Law requires authorship to accurately reflect substantial scholarly contributions to research in constitutional law, administrative law, criminal law, civil law, business and commercial law, international law, human rights, environmental law, technology and cyber law, dispute resolution, governance, legal reform, and related fields.

SUBSTANTIAL CONTRIBUTION CRediT TAXONOMY FULL ACCOUNTABILITY

Authorship represents both academic credit and responsibility. A person should be listed as an author only when they have made a meaningful intellectual contribution to the research and accept responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, transparency, source reliability, ethical conduct, and scholarly quality of the published work.

1. Criteria for Authorship

All listed authors must demonstrate substantial scholarly involvement in the study. Authorship should normally include all of the following:

1	Substantial Research Contribution Significant contribution to the legal research problem, doctrinal or theoretical framework, selection and analysis of statutes, regulations, cases, treaties, legal principles, comparative materials, empirical legal data, socio-legal evidence, interviews, jurisprudence, methodology, legal interpretation, or development of the argument.
2	Intellectual Contribution to the Manuscript Active participation in drafting the manuscript or critically revising its legal reasoning, doctrinal interpretation, comparative analysis, methodological approach, case analysis, policy implications, discussion, or scholarly contribution.
3	Final Approval Review and approval of the final manuscript, including the accuracy of author names, affiliations, legal citations, statutory and regulatory references, case references, treaty provisions, quotations, empirical findings where applicable, declarations, and references.
4	Accountability Agreement to take responsibility for the author's contribution and to cooperate in resolving questions concerning legal sources, statutory interpretation, case analysis, empirical legal data, quotations, comparative reasoning, research ethics, research integrity, authorship, or other aspects of the published work.

Activities That Do Not Alone Qualify for Authorship

The following activities, when performed alone, are generally insufficient to justify authorship:

• Providing research funding only	• Providing access to courts, law firms, government agencies, legal databases, case files, statutes, or institutional records only
• General academic, legal, institutional, or administrative supervision	• Holding a judicial, governmental, law-firm, institutional, managerial, or professional position
• Routine case retrieval, legal-document collection, citation checking, transcription, or clerical assistance	• Language editing, proofreading, translation, or formatting only
• Providing database access, legal texts, office facilities, research assistants, or logistical support only	• General encouragement, networking, professional advice, or mentorship without scholarly contribution

Individuals providing these forms of assistance may be recognized in the Acknowledgments section, subject to their permission where appropriate.

2. Author Contribution Statement – CRediT

Every accepted manuscript must include an Author Contribution Statement. Authors are encouraged to use the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) to identify each author's contribution transparently.

Conceptualization Development of legal research questions, doctrinal issues, constitutional problems, regulatory questions, comparative-law concepts, human-rights issues, governance questions, or theoretical legal frameworks.	Methodology Development or design of doctrinal, normative, comparative, historical, socio-legal, empirical legal, qualitative, case-study, policy-analysis, or interdisciplinary legal research methods.
Formal Analysis Doctrinal, statutory, case-law, constitutional, comparative, regulatory, treaty, human-rights, policy, qualitative, quantitative, or other legal analytical work.	Investigation Conducting case-law research, statutory and regulatory review, archival research, interviews, court or institutional studies, document analysis, field research, or empirical legal data collection.
Data Curation Collecting, organizing, coding, documenting, anonymizing, cataloguing, or maintaining cases, statutes, regulations, treaties, court records, interview data, legal documents, or empirical legal datasets.	Software Legal-database processing, text analysis, coding of legal documents, qualitative-data management, empirical legal analysis, corpus analysis, or development of research tools where relevant.
Validation Verification of statutes, regulations, cases, legal citations, treaty provisions, quotations, coding frameworks, translations, doctrinal interpretations, or empirical legal findings.	Visualization Preparation of research tables, legal frameworks, comparative-law matrices, regulatory diagrams, timelines, case maps, institutional models, or data visualizations.
Writing – Original Draft Preparation of the initial scholarly manuscript.	Writing – Review & Editing Critical intellectual review and substantive manuscript revision.
Resources Provision of essential legal databases, court records, statutes, regulations, treaties, archival documents, interview access, or other resources combined with scholarly contribution.	Supervision Intellectual oversight and scholarly guidance of the research process.
Project Administration Coordination and management of research activities.	Funding Acquisition Acquisition of financial support for the research project.

Note: Assignment of a CRediT role does not automatically qualify an individual for authorship. The individual must also satisfy the journal's authorship requirements and accept accountability.

3. Example of Author Contribution Statement

Example – Doctrinal / Comparative Legal Research

Author Contributions: A.B.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft. C.D.: Data Curation, Validation, Visualization. E.F.: Supervision, Resources, Writing – Review & Editing. All authors approved the final manuscript and agreed to be accountable for their contributions.

Example – Socio-Legal / Empirical Legal Research

Author Contributions: A.B.: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft. C.D.: Investigation, Data Curation, Formal Analysis. E.F.: Validation, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.

4. Author Order

Author order must be determined and agreed upon collectively by the author group before manuscript submission. The journal does not assign or determine author order.

The authorship list and order must be consistent across the submitted manuscript, OJS metadata, Author Contribution Statement, declarations, source or empirical-data documentation where applicable, and final published article.

5. Corresponding Author

One author must be identified as the corresponding author and serve as the primary contact between the journal and all co-authors.

✓ Ensures all authors approve manuscript submission	✓ Verifies author names, affiliations, email, and ORCID information
✓ Coordinates responses to reviewers	✓ Ensures all authors approve substantive revisions
✓ Verifies funding, ethics, permissions, confidentiality, and Conflict of Interest Statements where applicable	✓ Coordinates Data, Legal Source, Case, Statutory, or Supplementary Material Availability where applicable
✓ Coordinates final proof approval	✓ Responds to post-publication source, methodological, or research-integrity inquiries when necessary

6. Unacceptable Authorship Practices

✕ Guest / Honorary Authorship Adding senior academics, judges, lawyers, government officials, law-firm partners, institutional leaders, or respected individuals who did not make sufficient scholarly contributions.	✕ Ghost Authorship Excluding individuals who made substantial contributions to doctrinal analysis, case-law research, statutory interpretation, comparative legal analysis, empirical legal research, data analysis, or manuscript preparation that qualify for authorship.
✕ Gift / Reciprocal Authorship Exchanging or granting authorship without genuine scholarly contribution.	✕ Purchased Authorship Buying, selling, or transferring authorship positions.
✕ Coercive Authorship Requiring inclusion because of supervisory, judicial, governmental, institutional, law-firm, managerial, or professional authority.	✕ Unauthorized Authorship Listing a person without their knowledge and approval.

7. Changes to Authorship

Addition, removal, or rearrangement of authors after submission must be exceptional and supported by a clear explanation and written consent from all affected authors.

BEFORE ACCEPTANCE
May be considered with full written agreement

AFTER ACCEPTANCE
Exceptional and subject to editorial approval

AFTER PUBLICATION
May require a formal Correction Notice

8. Authorship Disputes

The Editorial Team may request explanations and documentation when an authorship dispute arises. However, the journal does not normally adjudicate disputes concerning who should or should not qualify as an author. Unresolved disputes may be referred to the authors' institution, research-integrity office, employer, professional body, or another appropriate authority. Editorial processing may be suspended until the dispute is resolved.

9. Artificial Intelligence and Authorship

Artificial intelligence tools, large language models, generative AI systems, and AI-based legal research or analytical platforms must not be listed as authors or co-authors. AI cannot accept accountability, approve a manuscript, declare conflicts of interest, or take responsibility for research integrity. Relevant AI-assisted activities, including AI-supported writing, translation, legal-text summarization, case or statute retrieval, coding, document classification, text analysis, empirical legal-data processing, or analytical support, must instead be disclosed according to the journal's Artificial Intelligence (AI) Usage Policy. Authors remain fully responsible for verifying statutes, regulations, case law, treaty provisions, quotations, citations, legal interpretations, and all other scholarly content.

Authorship Checklist Before Submission

✓ Every listed author has made a genuine scholarly contribution	✓ No eligible contributor has been omitted
✓ Author order has been approved by all authors	✓ All authors approved the submitted manuscript
✓ Author Contribution Statement is complete	✓ Corresponding author has been identified
✓ OJS metadata matches the manuscript	✓ Statutes, regulations, cases, treaties, quotations, legal citations, empirical data, permissions, and ethics statements are accurate where applicable
✓ AI-assisted activities have been disclosed where required	✓ All authors accept responsibility for the published work

Authorship Principle

In Sinergi International Journal of Law, authorship is based on substantive intellectual contribution and accountability. Academic, judicial, governmental, or professional rank, institutional authority, access to statutes, cases, court records, legal databases, government agencies, law firms, research materials, funding alone, routine citation checking or document collection, supervisory status, or professional seniority does not by itself justify authorship.