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Policies

Contents

Philosophy of The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice

For more information, please see The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice Aims and Scope page.

Who Can Submit?

The journal is open to academics, practitioners, and students of criminal justice/criminology or related disciplines. Anyone may submit an original article to be considered for publication in The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice provided they own the copyright to the work being submitted or are authorized by the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

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General Submission Rules

The manuscript must be an original work and cannot have been previously published (print or electronic). Upon submitting a manuscript to The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice, the author(s) signifies that the material is not under review with another journal (electronic or print). This also means that the author(s) agrees not to submit the same manuscript to another journal (electronic or print) until the process is completed and a decision has been made with The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice. Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. If you have concerns about the submission terms for The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice, please contact the editors.

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Formatting Requirements

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice has no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission. There are, however, rules governing the formatting of the final submission. See Final Manuscript Preparation Guidelines for details. Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a high-quality PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) file, or a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect or RTF file that can be converted to a PDF file.

It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations that readers may have.

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Peer Review Process

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice uses a three-stage review process. The first stage is internal review consisting of a review by the Editors. These reviews function to provide insurance that the manuscript meets the level of quality sought by the journal. If the Editors agree, the manuscript will be sent to two additional external reviewers. The external reviewers will assess the quality of the manuscript and provide recommendations to the Editors. This will include a decision to reject, revise and resubmit, or outright accept the manuscript. External reviewers will provide feedback to the author(s) to help enhance the manuscript regardless of final decision. The final decision to accept the manuscript for publication falls within the purview of the Editors. If accepted for publication, the manuscript will then go through the third stage of review: copy-editing for quality control.

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Authorship

All parties who made a significant or substantive contribution to the manuscript should be listed as authors. Authorship order and publication credits should be based on the relative professional contributions of those involved (academic or professional status of the individual should not dictate this decision). Students are expected to be listed as principal author on any multiple-authored publication that significantly draws from the students’ work. This includes, but is not limited to dissertations, theses, or course assignments.

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Declaration of Conflicting Interests

All authors are required to acknowledge external funding and/or conflicts of interest that would pose any significant ethical issue along standard academic guidelines.

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Research Ethics

The Mid-Southern Journal of Criminal Justice is committed upholding the integrity of sound academic practices. We encourage authors to review the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, Code of Ethics at https://www.acjs.org/page/Code_Of_Ethics

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Rights for Authors and Marshall Digital Scholar

As further described in our submission agreement (the Submission Agreement), in consideration for publication of the article, the authors assign to Marshall Digital Scholar all copyright in the article, subject to the expansive personal--use exceptions described below.

Attribution and Usage Policies

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium as permitted by a personal-use exemption or by written agreement of Marshall Digital Scholar, requires credit to Marshall Digital Scholar as copyright holder (e.g., Marshall Digital Scholar © 2024).

Personal-use Exceptions

The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from Marshall Digital Scholar provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:

  • Storage and back-up of the article on the author's computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.), provided that the article stored on these computers and media is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s);
  • Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website, provided that the website is non-commercial;
  • Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment (e.g., a Phrenology professor at the University of Southern North Dakota can have her article appear in the University of Southern North Dakota's Department of Phrenology online publication series); and
  • Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.

People seeking an exception, or who have questions about use, should contact the editors.

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General Terms and Conditions of Use

Users of the Marshall Digital Scholar website and/or software agree not to misuse the Marshall Digital Scholar service or software in any way.

The failure of Marshall Digital Scholar to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between Marshall Digital Scholar and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.

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