Policies

Law, Technology and Humans is an international, open access, peer-reviewed journal publishing original, innovative research concerned with the human and humanity of law and technology.

The Law, Technology and Humans journal is supported by the Humans Technology Law Centre in the Faculty of Business and Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. The Journal is published by QUT using Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open source software application for managing and publishing scholarly journals.

Authors can submit and publish at no cost. There are no APCs (Article Processing Charges).

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Book Reviews. Reviews should be between 600-1000 words.

 

FEATURES

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Features are determined by the Editorial team, often in consultation with the Editorial Board. Features may include, for example, invited papers of a topical nature, interviews with key scholars and practitioners or perspective pieces.

 

Please download the Law, Technology and Humans Author Guidelines for format requirements and referencing style information and examples

Author guidelines for Book Reviews can be found here - all queries to Dr Faith Gordon lawtechhum@qut.edu.au 

Special Issues

Law, Technology and Humans publishes three issues per year: April, July and November.

All queries related to special issues or symposium collections should be sent to lawtechhum@qut.edu.au. Prospective guest editors are required to complete an EOI. The Journal Editorial team will assist with the call for submissions. All submissions will come via the Journal website and authors are asked to indicate that the article is for the special issue or symposium collection.  Guest Editor(s), in liaison, with the Journal Editorial team, will ensure articles are within the scope of the Journal themes and are suitable for peer review.

The double-blind peer review policy requires a minimum of two independent reviews. The review process will be determined in consultation between the Editorial team and the Guest Editor(s).

Guest Editor(s) are provided with appropriate information (Guest Editor Guidelines and EOI template) to assist with the workflow.

Copyright

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1.   Authors retain copyright and grant the Journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0). This Licence allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2.   Authors have obtained all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any third-party copyright materials included in submissions. Please review copyright permissions.
3.   Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC)*

Definitions

‘AI’ and ‘automation’ are not interchangeable - automation refers to rules based software, and includes tools like spelling and grammar checkers, whereas Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) refers to unique content created by tools using predictions made via machine learning from LLMs (large language models) or SMLs (small language models.)

This policy covers the use of AIGC whether by authors, editors, or peer reviewers. Use of automation is not included in this policy and is permitted by LTHJ.

Authorship

LTHJ is in agreement with the following statement from Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):

AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work. As non-legal entities, they cannot assert the presence or absence of conflicts of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.

Please review COPE’s Full statement on AI authorship.

LTHJ Policy on the use of AIGC and AI Tools

Below is outlined LTHJ’s policy on the use of AIGC and AI tools for authors, editors and peer reviewers.

Appreciating that the field of artificial intelligence is changing rapidly, LTHJ will review developments and COPE guidelines for AI use and update this policy to reflect the most current best practice.

Authors:

If authors submitting to LTHJ have used AIGC in  any portion of a manuscript, including text, data, images, graphics, videos, citations or translations, the tool and its use  must be described in detail in the Methods and/or Acknowledgements sections of the manuscript, including prompts used if appropriate, and the full text of the original AIGC be attached as supplemental material. AIGC tools include, but are not limited to, GPT-4, ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and other tools trained on LLMs or SMLs that generate unique content based on predictions. This also applies to AIGC add-ons within software offered by Microsoft, Adobe and others, as well as online applications offered by Google, Zoom, Canva  and others.

In accordance with the above COPE statement: 

• AIGC tools cannot be listed as authors. 
• As with standard manuscript submission, the author is responsible for the accuracy of all information provided by the tool. 

Editors:

As it is currently unclear how data ingested in AI tools is stored and reused, sharing any part of the manuscript including text, figures, graphs, and images violates the confidentiality authors expect when submitting manuscripts to LTHJ. As such, editors agree not to ingest the manuscript into artificial intelligence tools to evaluate the material or find potential peer reviewers. 

Peer Review:

Just as authors are accountable for the quality and integrity of their scholarly work, LTHJ holds peer reviewers to the same standard. LTHJ does not allow the use of AI tools in the peer review of manuscripts. Among the reasons are:

• AIGC tools are trained on past data whereas the peer review process is concerned with the evaluation of new research and the novel application of methodologies which can only be properly assessed by expert researchers in the field.
• AIGC tools at this point in time can replicate and amplify human bias rather than correct it in the peer review process.
• AIGC tools are often created and owned by private commercial interests and their processes are not transparent or interpretable.

Uploading manuscripts into AIGC tools compromises authors' proprietary rights and confidentiality.

Peer reviewers will be required to acknowledge LTHJ’s policy on the use of AI in peer review when accepting manuscripts for review.

*This policy was adapted with kind permission from the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication

Peer Review Process

All submitted papers should be original, unpublished, and not in consideration for publication elsewhere at the time of submission to Law, Technology and Humans. 

Articles will be refereed in a double-blind review process by at least two reviewers with expertise in the relevant subject area.

Preprint policy

The Journal will consider submissions already available as a preprint on condition that the author agrees to the below:

• The author retains copyright to the preprint and developed works from it and is permitted to submit to the journal.
• The author declares that a preprint is available within the cover letter or ‘Comments to Editor’ presented during submission. This must include a link to the location of the preprint.
• That the preprint submission is clearly cited and included in the Bibliography.

In Chicago 17^th edition (notes, bibliography) the correct citation style is as follows:

Footnote:

Author, "Title," number of the cited page.

Bibliography:

Author. "Title." Preprint, submitted in Year or date submitted. URL.

• The author acknowledges that having a preprint publicly available means that the journal cannot guarantee the anonymity of the author during the review process, even if they anonymise the submitted files.
• The authors are required to update the information associated with the preprint version to show that a final version has been published in the Journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

 Please email the General Editor for further information lawtechhum@qut.edu.au 

 

Publication frequency

From 2024: April, July and November.  There may be early release of articles published at any time as Online First

 

Open Access Policy

Law, Technology and Humans is a free to read, free to publish, institutionally supported journal.

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Law, Technology and Humans defines open access according to the definition provided by Open Access Australasia:

Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of cost or other access barriers.  Through licensing via an open license (usually a Creative Commons License), freely available outputs can also be legally shared and reused. Hence, open access is more than just free access.

Additionally, the Journal recognises the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) principles and recommendations for open access (updated in March 2022) which note that “…OA is not an end in itself, but a means to other ends, above all, to the equity, quality, usability, and sustainability of research.”

An information page summarising Open Access can be found here

Sex and Gender in Research (SAGER Guidelines)

The editors encourage authors to follow the ‘Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER – guidelines’ and include sex and gender considerations where relevant. Authors should use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing terms

The SAGER Guidelines (developed by the European Association of Science Editors [EASE]) provide recommendations for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results and interpretations of findings. They are primarily designed to guide authors in preparing their manuscripts. These guidelines are now accompanied by a checklist which authors should review. 

Definition of Sex and Gender (taken from Office of Research in Women’s Health, NIH).

Sex - refers to biological differences between females and males, including chromosomes, sex organs, and endogenous hormonal profiles.

Gender - refers to socially constructed and enacted roles and behaviours which occur in a historical and cultural context and vary across societies and over time.

The SAGER guidelines and checklist are endorsed by COPE of which Law, Technology and Humans policies are aligned to.

Archiving and Self-Archiving

Authors are permitted (and encouraged) to post their accepted work online in institutional/disciplinary repositories or on their own websites. Post-print versions (including the final publisher's PDF) should include a citation and link to the Journal's website.

This journal currently utilises the LOCKSS program which offers decentralized and distributed preservation, seamless perpetual access, and preservation of the authentic original version of the content. The PKP Preservation Network (PN) ensures that journals that are not part of any other digital preservation service (such as CLOCKSS or Portico) can be preserved for long-term access. The Journal title is included in a digital archive https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2652-4074#  The Journal's SHERPA/RoMEO record can be found at https://v2.sherpa.ac.uk/id/publication/36811

 

Ethics and Integrity

This Journal has a Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Law, Technology and Humans has aligned with the ethos and best practice guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for dealing with ethical issues in journal publishing and has adopted the COPE guidelines which the journal members (Editorial Board, editors and the journal manager) have agreed meet the purposes and objectives of the Journal.

Recognising our ethical and other responsibilities, we take all possible measures against malpractice and we are committed to ensuring that reprint, advertising or other commercial revenue or political gain has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. We publish papers based only on their quality, importance, originality, and relevance to our remit. We evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, citizenship, ethnic origin, or political philosophy of the authors.

We also acknowledge different guidelines to inform research practice, underpinned by the principles expressed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. For example, the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Code of Ethics for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research and Te Ara Tika — guidelines for Māori research ethics.

We are committed to ensuring ethics in publication and high quality of scholarship. Conformance to standards of ethical behaviour is therefore expected of all parties involved: Authors, Editors, Reviewers, and the Publisher.

Authors: By submitting a manuscript, the author(s) warrant that the manuscript is their own, original work and that it has neither been published previously nor is currently being considered for publication elsewhere. Submitting the same manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unacceptable. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical conduct and is unacceptable. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication. Authors must disclose the ethical clearance/approval details attained for their research reported in their article.

Editors: The editors of this journal will evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit and fit with the journal's themes. The editors are responsible for deciding which submitted papers should be published. The editor and any editorial staff must maintain confidentiality and not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, other editorial advisers, and the publisher. The editors will not use unpublished information in their own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should take reasonable responsive measures when ethical complaints have been presented concerning a submitted manuscript or published paper.

Reviewers: This journal uses a blind peer review process which assists in making editorial decisions. The review process usually takes 4-6 weeks. Any manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used by reviewer without the express written consent of the author. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers. Peer reviewers’ identities are protected as are authors.

Corrections

Occasionally authors may request corrections to a published article.  The decision to correct an article is the responsibility of the editorial team. All requests for corrections are considered on an individual basis and in consultation with the Editorial Board.  Where a correction is made Law, Technology and Humans will update and publish the article with a new DOI, and a correction notice will be published separately.  Updated metadata will be redelivered to our various indexing services.

Suspected plagiarism in a submission:

Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical conduct and is unacceptable. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.

Law, Technology and Humans uses iThenticate - plagiarism detection software - and may utilise the software if the editorial team or the reviewer/s have concerns about original content.