Policies
Policies
1. Journal Review and Editorial Policy
Publishability of articles
For an article to be accepted for publication in the Turf Law Journal, it must meet high-level quality standards and be an original piece that has never been published or is not under consideration by another publication.
- All submissions must strictly adhere to the journal style before they can be considered for review by the journal.
- Authors are encouraged to do language editing before submitting an article for consideration.
Types of papers published by the journal
The Turf Law Journal publishes articles, book reviews, case notes and comments. The journal welcomes articles of between 7 000 to 12 000 words, inclusive of references. Book reviews, case notes, and comments must be between 3 000 to 5 500 words, inclusive of references. All contributions to the Turf Law Journal will be subjected to a compulsory double-blind peer review.
Submission of manuscripts
Manuscripts may only be submitted in electronic format (using MS Word file) through an email to the editor. turflawjournal@ul.ac.za
In addition, authors –
- must supply their relevant contact particulars, especially email address(es) and telephone numbers;
- guarantee that they are legally entitled to have the full submission published and that it, or a part of it, has not been published elsewhere before;
- disclose whether it, or a part of it, has been submitted to any other journal for publication; and
- undertake to give reasonable notice to the editor if the submission is withdrawn for any reason.
Alternatively, authors may send manuscripts by registering and logging onto the Turf Law Journal website.
Academic integrity
The Turf Law Journal adheres to the highest standards of academic integrity. As such, the journal abhors academic dishonesty in all its forms, including, but not limited to, plagiarism, non-disclosure, predating, or any form of academic dishonesty. As a result, the journal uses Turn-It-In software to test the originality of articles and check plagiarism. The acceptable similarity index must be below 10%.
Article and author limitations
- Since the Turf Law Journal cherishes diversity of perspectives, no author will publish more than one full article in one issue. An author may only publish two articles if one of the articles is either co-authored or is a half article (review, comment or case note).
- At least 70 per cent of the articles published per issue of the journal shall come from different institutions. That is, only 30 percent of the articles may come from authors in one institution.
Peer review mechanism
The Turf Law Journal will ordinarily adopt a double-blind review except where there is a stark difference between the two reviewers about the acceptability of the proposed manuscript, in which case the Editor-in-Chief may appoint a third reviewer. In order to expedite the process of review, reviewers will be given a maximum of four weeks to review a manuscript.
Regularity of the journal
The journal publishes one open volume annually.
2. Journal Open Access Policy
This Turf Law Journal uses the Open Journals Systems software for management and publishing support. OJS is an open-source solution for managing and publishing scholarly journals online. OJS is a highly flexible editor-operated journal management and publishing system that can be easily downloaded and installed on a server. It has been designed to reduce the time and energy devoted to the clerical and managerial tasks associated with editing a journal, while improving the record-keeping and efficiency of editorial processes. It seeks to improve the scholarly and public quality of journal publishing through a number of innovations, from making journal policies more transparent to improving indexing.
OJS is a journal and website management and publishing system. OJS covers all aspects of online journal publishing, from setting up the journal website, through the author's submission to the peer review, editing, publication, archiving, and indexing of the journal. OJS also helps to manage the people aspects of organizing a journal, including keeping track of the work of editors, reviewers, and authors, notifying readers, and assisting with the correspondence.
OJS is flexible and scalable. A single installation of OJS can support the operation of many journals. Each journal has its own unique URL as well as its own look and feel. OJS can enable a single editor to manage a journal and the journal's website. Or OJS will support an international team of editors with responsibilities for a journal's multiple sections.
OJS supports the principle of extending access. This system is intended not only to assist with journal publishing, but also to demonstrate how costs of journal publishing can be reduced to the point where providing readers with "open access" to the contents of the journal may be viable option. The case for open access is spelled out over a wide series of articles stemming from this project, which are freely available under Publications at the Public Knowledge Project.
- All articles published by the Journal are fully open-access.
- Articles and the whole journal are immediately freely available to read, download and share.
- Readers are permitted to use, distribute and reproduce the journal content in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
3. Privacy Policy
- The Turf Law Journal is committed to protecting our users’ privacy as required by South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), 2013. As such, the Journal only collects personal information when users provide such information voluntarily, e.g. when they register to use the online submission website of a Journal or when they request information and wish to receive such information via e-mail.
- In some cases, non-personal information such as the user’s domain and IP-address is stored on the user’s computer as a cookie-file and in a statistics file on the web server. This information is used to improve the service offered to users.
- The collected personal information is stored in databases to which access is strictly controlled and only journal staff, who in the course of their duties need to have access to such information.
- No personal information about a user will be disclosed to third parties without the user’s permission or due process.
- By using the journal website, the user consents to the following:
- The Journal may use personal information about the user to communicate with the user from time to time.
- The Journal may use the user’s information for non-personal statistical purposes.
- Registered users may view their own personal information through the website. All reasonable steps will be taken to secure a user’s information. Users undertake not to divulge their usernames and passwords to any other person.
- It is expressly prohibited for any person, business, or entity to gain or attempt to gain unauthorised access to any information on the journal website, or to deliver or attempt to deliver any unauthorised, damaging or malicious code to this website.
- Any person who delivers or attempts to deliver any unauthorised, damaging or malicious code to the journal website or attempts to gain unauthorised access to any page on this website shall be held criminally liable, and in the event that the Journal or University of Limpopo should suffer any damage or loss, civil damages will be claimed.
4. Copyright Policy
- Copyright on any of the articles in the Journal is retained by the author(s).
- Authors grant the Journal a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
- Authors also grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its integrity is maintained and its original authors, citation details and publisher are identified.
5. Archiving Policy
The Turf Law Journal allows self-archiving of accepted and published academic works through open access policy. This is applicable before and after the publication of a paper in the TLJ. All authors shall retain the copyright of their scholarly work and can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher’s version/PDF to personal or institutional repositories or libraries anytime without requiring permission from the TLJ or its publisher.
6. Repository Policy
The Turf Law Journal allows authors to deposit versions of their work on their institutional webpages or any repository of their choice. The TLJ will not charge any fees for author’s depositing of their work.
7. Publication fees or processing fees
The Turf Law Journal does not charge any publication or processing fees. All manuscripts submitted for consideration are, upon acceptance, published without any charges.
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