Editorial & Publisher Responsibilities

Editorial & Publisher Responsibilities

Dharmaputra Medical Law Journal (DMLJ)

Jurnal Dharmaputra Hukum Kesehatan

P-ISSN: 3124-1964 | E-ISSN: 3124-1840

Overview

DMLJ operates in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. This page sets out the responsibilities of the Editor-in-Chief, handling editors, and the publisher (RSUD Wangaya) in ensuring the integrity, fairness, and quality of the editorial process and the published journal.

Editor-in-Chief (EiC) Responsibilities

The EiC bears overall responsibility for the editorial direction, integrity, and quality of DMLJ. The EiC's core responsibilities include:

Fair and Objective Evaluation

The EiC ensures that all manuscripts are evaluated on their intellectual and scholarly merit alone, without regard to the authors' nationality, institutional affiliation, ethnicity, gender, religion, or political views. Evaluation criteria are applied consistently and transparently.

No Discrimination

The EiC is responsible for ensuring that the editorial process is free from any form of discrimination. Editorial decisions are made solely on the basis of the manuscript's content and suitability for the journal.

Confidentiality

The EiC and all editorial staff must treat submitted manuscripts and all communications pertaining to them as strictly confidential. Unpublished work submitted to DMLJ may not be disclosed to or discussed with third parties without the written consent of the authors.

Conflict of Interest Management

The EiC must recuse themselves from any editorial decision in which they have a direct conflict of interest — for example, manuscripts submitted by their own institution, close collaborators, or individuals with whom they have a personal relationship. Such manuscripts are handled by a designated deputy or senior editorial board member.

Corrections and Retractions

The EiC takes primary responsibility for deciding when and how published errors, corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions are issued, in accordance with COPE guidelines and DMLJ's Research Misconduct & Retraction Policy.

Handling Editor Responsibilities

Handling editors (associate editors or editorial board members delegated to manage individual manuscripts) are responsible for:

  • Reviewer selection: Identifying and inviting appropriately qualified, independent reviewers with relevant expertise and no conflicts of interest with the authors.
  • Reviewer guidance: Providing reviewers with clear instructions, the journal's reviewer guidelines, and the criteria against which manuscripts are to be assessed.
  • Timeliness: Monitoring the review process to ensure manuscripts progress through peer review within reasonable and communicated timescales.
  • Preliminary recommendation: Reviewing the complete set of reviewer reports and, where applicable, the authors' response to reviewers, and providing a preliminary recommendation to the EiC.
  • Conflict of interest disclosure: Promptly disclosing to the EiC any conflict of interest that arises once a manuscript has been assigned to them, and recusing themselves where necessary.

Publisher Responsibilities (RSUD Wangaya)

RSUD Wangaya, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, as the institutional publisher of DMLJ, is responsible for:

Editorial Independence

RSUD Wangaya explicitly respects and upholds the editorial independence of the DMLJ editorial board. The publisher does not intervene in, direct, override, or otherwise interfere with editorial decisions on individual manuscripts. All publication decisions are made solely by the editorial team on scholarly grounds.

Infrastructure Support

The publisher provides and maintains the technical infrastructure required to operate the journal, including the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, the journal website at https://dmedlaw.org, and the systems required for manuscript submission, peer review, and publication.

Financial Support

The publisher funds the operating costs of DMLJ to enable it to function as a Diamond Open Access journal — charging no fees to authors and providing free access to all readers. No article processing charges (APCs) or submission fees are levied.

No Editorial Interference

Institutional considerations — including the reputation, financial interests, or activities of RSUD Wangaya — will never influence editorial decisions, the selection of manuscripts, or the journal's scientific or legal positions.

COPE Guidelines Compliance

DMLJ adheres to the policies and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In particular, DMLJ follows COPE guidelines in the handling of:

  • Suspected research misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, duplicate submission, authorship issues).
  • Reviewer conflicts of interest and reviewer misconduct.
  • Authorship disputes.
  • Manuscript complaints and appeals.
  • Corrections, expressions of concern, and retractions.

Editorial Board Accountability

All members of the DMLJ editorial board, including the EiC and handling editors, are expected to:

  • Disclose any personal, financial, or professional conflict of interest in relation to manuscripts under their consideration.
  • Maintain the confidentiality of all unpublished submissions and related correspondence.
  • Abstain from using information or data from unpublished submissions for their own research without the explicit written consent of the authors.
  • Conduct themselves in accordance with the highest ethical standards of scholarly publishing at all times.
  • Raise any concern about a potential breach of these responsibilities with the EiC or, where the EiC is involved, with the publisher.

Editorial board members who are found to have breached these responsibilities may be removed from the board following investigation in accordance with COPE guidelines.

Principal Contact: Gede Krisna Udiana, S.K.M., M.H.Kes.  |  +62 812-3898-787  |  udiana.krisna@gmail.com

https://dmedlaw.org