About us
Focus and Scope
Our journal welcomes any type of research in law and criminology. This broad focus aims to attract contributions from a wide range of disciplines and subfields in law and criminology, promoting interdisciplinary collaboration and exchange of ideas.
We welcome contributions from researchers at all stages of their career, from emerging academics to established scholars. Submissions are assessed on the basis of academic quality. Our journal accepts original research articles, review articles and registered reports.
LCJ is published by the Faculty of Law and Criminology at Ghent University. Through this journal it demonstrates its commitment to transparent scientific research, fostering reproducibility and accelerating scientific discovery.
Peer Review
All papers are peer-reviewed by experts in their respective fields.
Blind or open review
Alongside standard (double) blind review, we also encourage open review. We see open review as identity transparency (according to the NISO standard terminology for peer review) during the review process. Upon submission, we ask authors if they agree to disclose their identity to the reviewers. Before review, we ask reviewers whether they agree to disclose their identity to the authors. Depending on the outcomes, the review process will be single or double blind, or open.
In the future, we will look into the possibility of publishing (anonymous) reviews alongside the final article, upon mutual agreement of authors and reviewers.
Standard review or scheduled review
LCJ offers two types of review procedures for authors and seeks to accelerate the review procedure where possible.
Standard review procedure: authors can choose to submit their article in the standard review procedure. This means that we start the review process after submission of the full article. Such a process will typically take somewhere between 6 to 8 weeks depending on the availability of reviewers.
Scheduled review procedure: authors can choose to use the scheduled review procedure. This implies that upon submission authors do not submit a full article but rather an outline of their article. This outline is considered by our editorial team and if deemed suitable is forwarded to reviewers in order to schedule the review process within a narrow timeframe (one week) at least 6 weeks in the future. Authors can select the submission date of the full article upon submitting the outline. Meanwhile, they can work on preparing the full manuscript.
This speeds up the review process (at least in the first round) considerably.
Review of registered reports
For registered reports peer review we follow a different track as this occurs in two steps:
- Peer review occurs prior to observing the outcomes of the research (step 1).
- Contributions that receive a positive peer review receive an in-principle acceptance that will not be revoked based on the outcomes, but only on failings of quality assurance, following through on the registered protocol, or unresolvable problems in reporting clarity or style.
- Following your data collection you resubmit and upon the condition of a second positive peer review your article is published (step 2).
Copyright Notice
Authors who publish their work with LCJ retain their copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.
Licences
LCJ uses the following licence for submission:
CC BY 4.0: Attribution — 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. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
Publication Cycle
LCJ is an online-only journal and uses "continuous article publishing" which means that each contribution that has been accepted for publication and processed is published online immediately. Consequently the annual volume of published articles grows article-by-article as we add them to the current volume. Every year there is one issue. The first issue publishes all contributions not pertaining to a special issue. Additional issues can be added for special issue contributions.
Metrics
In the evaluation of research, we endorse the responsible use of indicators and metrics such as the journal impact factor (JIF). We are aware that journal-based metrics can have a place in research assessment, but we are cautious to treat these metrics as a substitute for the scholarly quality of an academic article.
Archiving
LCJ partners with LOCKSS/CLOCKSS for archival preservation of published research to guarantee long-term preservation and access.
Indexing
Since we are a newly founded journal, we are currently not included in established academic databases. We aim to submit for indexing as soon as possible in databases including, but not limited to: the Flemish Academic Bibliography for the Social Sciences and the Humanities (VABB-SHW), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Scopus, and Web of Science.
Contact details
LCJ - Law & Criminology Journal
lcj [at] ugent [dot] be
+32 9 264 69 96
Universiteitstraat 4
B-9000 Ghent