Policies
The policies below govern how IJLGMR reviews, publishes, corrects, and preserves the work it carries. They are published in full, in one place, and apply to every submission without exception.
Open access statement
IJLGMR is a fully open access journal. Every article published is available to read, download, and cite immediately on publication, at no cost to the reader, with no subscription, no registration, no login, and no embargo period. Full text of every article is downloadable directly from its article page.
The Journal charges no reading fee of any kind. Its costs are met from author submission fees, disclosed in full under the revenue policy below.
Copyright and licensing
Copyright in each published article remains with its author. IJLGMR does not require authors to transfer copyright to the Journal.
By submitting, authors grant IJLGMR the exclusive right of first and continuing publication. An article published in IJLGMR may not subsequently be republished, reproduced, or reposted in another journal, repository, platform, or personal or institutional page. Authors who wish to place their work elsewhere should not submit it to IJLGMR.
Authors additionally agree at the point of submission that IJLGMR may syndicate or cross-publish the article to legal research databases and indexing platforms, including Manupatra, as part of the Journal's distribution and indexing programme.
Note on this policy. Free access to read is unconditional. Rights of onward reuse and self-archiving, however, are reserved to the Journal rather than granted to the reader under a standard open licence such as Creative Commons. Authors and indexing bodies should read this section carefully, as it is more restrictive than the reuse terms some open access indexes expect.
Peer review policy
IJLGMR operates an open review model. Every manuscript that passes desk screening is assigned to three reviewers. No manuscript is accepted on the strength of a single review.
Desk rejection. Before review, each submission is screened by the Managing Editor and is desk-rejected where it falls outside the Journal's scope, breaches the stated word limits, or is written to a standard of English that would not survive review. Desk-rejected submissions receive notice without a reviewer report.
Turnaround. Authors receive a decision within one to two weeks of submission.
Reviewer recognition. Reviewers serve voluntarily and are not paid. Each reviewer receives a certificate of service in recognition of their work.
Cover for conflicts. Where a member of the Editorial Board has declared a conflict of interest in a manuscript, or is unavailable, the review is passed to a member of the Advisory Board, who steps in voluntarily in their place.
Plagiarism and originality
Every manuscript passing desk screening is checked through Turnitin. The Journal holds and funds this subscription itself; authors are not asked to obtain or pay for a similarity report.
The Journal enforces a maximum similarity threshold of 10%, exclusive of properly attributed quotation and standard legal citation. A manuscript returning a score above this threshold is returned to the author, who is permitted one opportunity to revise and resubmit. A revised submission that again exceeds the threshold is rejected.
Every submission must carry a signed originality and declaration form confirming that the work is the author's own, is not under consideration at another journal, and has not been published previously. A submission arriving without this form is not processed.
Use of artificial intelligence in manuscript preparation
Authors must disclose, at the point of submission, any use of generative artificial intelligence tools in the preparation of the manuscript, stating which tool was used and for what purpose.
AI tools may not be listed as an author. Responsibility for the entirety of the submitted text — its accuracy, its citations, and its originality — rests with the named human authors, irrespective of any tool used in drafting. Undisclosed substantive use of AI generation is treated as a breach of the originality declaration and handled under the misconduct policy below.
Authorship and contributorship
Authorship is limited to those who have made a substantive intellectual contribution to the work. A maximum of two co-authors is permitted per submission, and all authors must be named at the time of submission.
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be made in writing, signed by all authors including any being removed, and are subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief. Disputes over authorship are handled under the complaints procedure and, where unresolved, referred to the authors' institutions.
Conflicts of interest
Authors must declare, at submission, any financial, professional, institutional, or personal interest that could reasonably be seen to bear on the work. Declared interests are published with the article.
Reviewers and editors must declare any conflict in a manuscript assigned to them — including institutional overlap, prior collaboration, or personal relationship with an author — and must recuse themselves. Where an Editorial Board member recuses, the review is passed to the Advisory Board.
Submissions from within. A member of the Editorial or Advisory Board who submits their own work to the Journal takes no part in its handling, review, or decision at any stage. The Editor-in-Chief's own submissions, if any, are handled independently by the Managing Editor with reviewers drawn from outside the Board.
Allegations of misconduct
Allegations of research or publication misconduct — plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate or redundant publication, undisclosed conflicts, or authorship misattribution — may be raised by any person, in writing, to the Editor-in-Chief.
Allegations are acknowledged in writing and investigated. The author is informed of the substance of the allegation and given a fair opportunity to respond before any conclusion is reached. Where an allegation is upheld, the Journal will, depending on severity, issue a correction, retract the article, notify the author's institution, or decline future submissions from the author. The complainant is informed of the outcome.
Allegations are handled in line with the principles set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics.
Complaints and appeals
An author who wishes to appeal an editorial decision may write to the Editor-in-Chief within thirty days of that decision, setting out the specific grounds of appeal and responding to the reviewer comments received.
Appeals are considered by the Editor-in-Chief. Where the appeal concerns a decision in which the Editor-in-Chief was personally involved, it is referred to a member of the Advisory Board who has had no prior involvement in the manuscript. Appeal outcomes are communicated in writing and are final.
Complaints about the conduct of the Journal, its staff, or its process, as distinct from an editorial decision, may be addressed to the Editor-in-Chief and receive a written response.
Corrections and retractions
Where an error is identified in a published article, the Journal issues a correction notice, linked to and from the original article. The original article is not silently altered; the version of record and the correction stand together.
Where an article is found to be fundamentally unreliable — through misconduct, substantial error, or duplicate publication — it is retracted. Retracted articles remain accessible, clearly and permanently marked as retracted, with a retraction notice stating the reason. The Journal does not remove retracted content from the record.
Post-publication discussion
The Journal welcomes substantive scholarly response to work it has published. Readers may submit a written response to a published article to the Managing Editor. Responses judged to make a substantive contribution are published alongside or with reference to the original article, and the original author is offered a right of reply before publication.
Data and supporting material
Where a manuscript relies on empirical data, survey instruments, or other supporting material, authors are expected to describe the source and method in the text, and to make the underlying material available to reviewers on request during review.
Given the Journal's exclusive publication terms, authors should note that deposit of the article itself in an external repository is not permitted; this does not restrict the sharing of underlying research data, which authors remain free to make available separately.
Ethical oversight
Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants — including interviews, surveys, and fieldwork — must confirm that informed consent was obtained and that any institutional ethics approval required was granted, with details supplied at submission.
Authors must ensure that identifying details of individuals are not published without consent, and must take particular care where research concerns vulnerable persons, ongoing proceedings, or confidential material. The Editor-in-Chief may decline any manuscript on ethical grounds irrespective of its scholarly merit.
Archiving and digital preservation
Published articles are hosted permanently on the Journal's own website as the version of record. The Journal maintains its own backup of all published content.
Arrangements for independent long-term preservation with a third-party archiving service are being established, and the specific arrangement will be named on this page once concluded. The Journal's commitment is that published content remains permanently accessible and is not withdrawn.
Repository and self-archiving policy
IJLGMR does not permit self-archiving. Authors may not deposit the submitted, accepted, or published version of an article in an institutional repository, a subject repository, a preprint server, a personal or departmental page, or an academic social network, either before or after publication.
This follows from the Journal's exclusive publication terms set out under copyright and licensing above. Authors for whom repository deposit is a funder or institutional requirement should confirm that this policy is compatible with their obligations before submitting.
Revenue model, fees, and transparency
IJLGMR is funded entirely by author submission fees. It receives no institutional subsidy, no grant funding, and no revenue from readers.
Submission fee: ₹1,200. The fee is identical for every author. There is no differential rate by student status, professional standing, or country of origin. The fee is charged at submission, is not contingent on acceptance, and is not refunded where a manuscript is rejected.
What the fee funds. Fee income meets the Journal's running costs: the Turnitin similarity-checking subscription, website hosting and domain, DOI registration, indexing and database submission costs, and certificate issuance. Editorial Board members, Advisory Board members, and reviewers are unpaid volunteers; no part of the fee is paid to them.
No charge to readers. There is no article processing charge levied after acceptance, no page charge, no colour charge, and no fee of any kind payable by a reader.
Acceptance rate. The Journal will publish its acceptance rate for each volume once Volume 1 has closed. No acceptance rate is claimed before there is a real one to report.
Advertising and direct marketing
IJLGMR carries no advertising on its website or in its published issues. It accepts no sponsored content and no paid placement, and no commercial interest has any influence over editorial decisions.
The Journal does not send unsolicited mass solicitations for manuscripts. Calls for papers are published on this website and circulated only to those who have asked to receive them.
ONOS and national access
As a fully open access journal charging no reader-side fee, IJLGMR's entire content is freely available to every institution and reader in India without the need for subscription access under the One Nation One Subscription framework. The Journal will register its metadata with the relevant national access infrastructure as it becomes available to journals of its standing.
Standards the Journal follows
These policies are drafted against the UGC's Suggestive Parameters for Choosing Peer-Reviewed Journals, and against the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing issued jointly by COPE, DOAJ, OASPA, and WAME.
IJLGMR does not claim inclusion in, or approval by, any index or list it has not been admitted to. Its indexing status, as it develops, is stated plainly and without embellishment.