About the Journal

1. Open Access Policy

Sports Law, Policy & Diplomacy Journal (SLPD Journal) is an open access journal. Users may read, download, copy, redistribute, print, search, and link to the material, modify, transform, or build upon it, or use it for any other lawful purpose, as long as they acknowledge the source appropriately in accordance with the CC BY-NC licence until vol. 3, no. 1 (2025) and CC BY 4.0 licence from vol. 3, no. 2 (2025).

The Diamond Open Access model is used, i.e., no author processing fees and no fees for access to published articles apply, and authors retain copyright

The SLPD Journal fully supports the open-science approach, follows the Open Science Policy of the University of Rijeka which is in line with the Strategy 2021-2025/2026 of the University and the leading EU and UNESCO recommendations.

2. Archiving Policy (self-archiving and long-term preservation) & Repository Policy

Authors may archive a preprint (i.e. pre-refereeing) version on their personal website, institutional repository or preprint servers, provided that it is clearly indicated that this is the version submitted to SLPD Journal with a link to the Journal’s website.

When submitting to our journal, authors must include in a footnote on the title page of the manuscript the name of the preprint server where the manuscript is uploaded, together with the URL and/or DOI of the preprint. Authors may archive post print (i.e. final draft post-refereeing) on their personal website, institutional or other repositories, provided that it is clearly indicated that this is the version accepted for publishing in SLPD Journal. DOI number and link to the in-press article on the Journal’s website should be provided. Authors may archive the publisher's version/PDF provided that the published source is acknowledged with an appropriate bibliographic citation, including authors, manuscript title, journal title, volume, issue, year, page numbers and DOI. If authors have uploaded the pre-refereed version to a preprint server, they are advised to add a link and the DOI of the final published paper to the preprint version.

All articles are deposited in the National and University Library in Zagreb and Hrčak (Central portal of Croatian scientific journals).

3. Peer Review Process

3.1. Peer Review Policy:

All manuscripts undergo an initial editorial check in order to assess whether the manuscript meets the journal's scientific and editorial standards and whether it fits the journal's goals and themes.

Those manuscripts that pass this initial review will be subjected to a double-blind review in which neither the author's nor the reviewer's identity will be disclosed. Therefore, authors are asked to remove from the text and bibliography, as well as from the properties of the electronic document, any information that might reveal their identity (name, project information, acknowledgements).

The Editorial Board will inform the authors in a timely manner about the results of the reviewers' and editors' work on the text. The Editors reserve the right to change the text according to the suggestions and norms of the English or Croatian language.

All manuscripts submitted in English require prior proofreading and editing by a native speaker or a professional editor to eliminate grammatical and spelling errors, as well as any typographical errors.

Reviewers must inform the Editorial Board of any possible conflicts of interest or irregularities related to the paper being reviewed. All papers received for review must be treated as confidential documents.

Upon receipt of the reviewers' reports, the authors shall submit to the Editorial Board, in addition to the new version of the manuscript, a cover letter indicating which reviewers' suggestions were accepted and in what manner (with reasons).

3.2. Categorisation of papers:

An original scientific paper presents the results of original research that has not previously been published in full or in preliminary form.

A preliminary communication contains at least one new scientific fact or result that requires immediate publication, but it should not contain sufficient detail to test the results described, as is the case with original scientific articles.

A review article contains an overall overview of recent and current research in a particular area. Articles in this category are surveys in nature that should include critical references and evaluations. The references must be complete enough to provide a good insight into the subject matter.

A professional paper does not have to be based on original research, but should contribute to the application of well-known research findings and present theoretical concepts.

A conference paper is a presentation from a scientific conference, previously delivered at such a conference, published in the form of a full paper and peer reviewed.

4. Copyright notice

SLPD Journal is an open access journal. The Journal does not charge article processing charges (APC) to authors. It is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licence (CC BY-NC licence 4.0.) until vol. 3, no. 1 (2025) and from vol. 3, no. 2 (2025) under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY licence 4.0).

Users may read, download, copy, redistribute, print, search and link to, modify, transform or build upon, or use the material for any other lawful purpose, as long as they acknowledge the source appropriately in accordance with the CC BY 4.0 licence.

Papers published in the SLPD Journal may be deposited in institutional and thematic repositories and self-archived if a link to the journal and HRČAK websites is provided.

After acceptance of the manuscript for publication by this Journal, the author can publish the same manuscript in other journals only with the permission of the Editorial Board (second publication). A republication should include a reference to where the manuscript was originally published.

5. Plagiarism Check

All manuscripts received are routinely checked for similarity to existing literature (plagiarism and self-plagiarism) by the iThenticate Similarity Check program:

https://www.crossref.org/services/similarity-check/.

6. Scientific misconduct, Procedure regarding scientific misconduct & Penalties

6.1. If it affirms that authors, peer-reviewers, publisher or editors or other involved parties have committed any form of scientific or ethical misconduct, the appropriate actions will be taken.

6.2.1. Every person may report the scientific misconduct of any involved persons by e-mail to the Editorial office. The complaint should contain general info on the claimant, point out the person being charged for scientific misconduct and if possible point out the paper which is result of scientific misconduct, brief description of scientific misconduct and, if possible, evidences of misconduct.

6.2.2. Editor will examine all the circumstances of the complaint and collect all the necessary evidences by proper means. The editor shall contact the claimants within three months from receiving the complaint and inform them whether the complaint was justified or not along with the explanations.

6.2.3. In the case of conflict of interests, the editor will retreat from the procedure and ask the publisher to appoint another person to run the procedure.

6.3. If the complaint is justified, depending on the severity of the scientific misconduct, the following actions may be taken

- Informing or educating authors or peer-reviewers on the scientific misconduct with the request to redo their task in compliance with this PEMS.

- Withdrawal unpublished paper from the publishing or discharging and appointing the new peer-reviewer for the individual paper.

- Publishing of appropriate notice, corrigendum, erratum or formal article retraction disclosed in print and electronic versions of the Journal.

7. Ethical principles: Author's responsibilities

7.1. Standards

The text of the paper submitted for publication must conform to accepted methodological and technical standards for writing a scientific paper and Author Guidelines. The data presented in the paper must be accurate.

7.2. Originality, plagiarism and citations

Authors should submit for publication only manuscripts that are their original texts and in which they clearly and precisely cite the work and/or parts of the work of other authors. Authors are required to cite not only parts of other authors' work that are directly cited in the paper, but also work that served as inspiration and stimulus for the paper.

7.3. Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

Papers dealing with the same research should generally not be published in more than one journal. Submission of the same paper to more than one journal is considered unethical and improper. Authors should not submit a paper for publication if it has already been published elsewhere or is under review in another journal. Only in justified cases and with the express permission of the Editor-in-Chief will publication of a previously published paper be permitted.

7.4. Authorship

Only persons who have made a substantial contribution to the work may be listed as co-authors of the work. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author to list as co-authors only those persons who have made a substantial contribution to the writing of the paper and to ensure that the co-authors acknowledge the final version of the paper and agree to its publication.

7.5. Conflict of interest and financing of the research

Authors are required to disclose to the Editorial Board information about potential conflicts of interest of any kind (e.g., employment, writing reports to international and national bodies, providing legal opinions, project proposals, etc.) that may be related to the research results and conclusions presented in the paper at the earliest possible time of submission of the paper for publication. In particular, authors are required to provide information on financial support for the conduct of the research presented in the paper.

7.6. Fundamental errors in published paper

If the authors discover significant errors in their published paper, they are obliged to inform the editorial office immediately so that the paper can be withdrawn or corrected as soon as possible. If the editorial office receives the information from a third party, the author is obliged to immediately prove the accuracy of the data or submit corrections. In this case, the Editor-in-Chief reserves the right to withdraw the contribution from publication if necessary.

8. Policy on Corrections and Denials of Published Article

8.1. Correction of data in the published article

The authors of the article are responsible for the accuracy of the published data in their article. Authors are expected to respond to editorial and reviewer comments in a professional and timely manner. If the author decides to withdraw a manuscript that has already been submitted to the review process or does not want to accept the reviewer's suggestions after the review process has been completed, he/she is obliged to inform the editor-in-chief as soon as possible. All corrections in the paper must be made before publication of the issue, therefore the corresponding author receives the final version of publication shortly before the publication, which must be reviewed and corrected within a short deadline defined by the Editorial office (usually 48 hours). If despite this and after publication the authors find a major error in the published article, they can submit a correction (erratum) to the editors, and it will be published online in the first next edition.

8.2. Withdrawal of published article

If, after the publication of the article, the authors notice an error that affects the reproducibility of the research and the accuracy of the results, then they report that error to the editors who, after a repeated review (and if they understand the author's doubts), will mark the online version of the article with the mark "retracted by the author". The link to the withdrawn paper will still be active, but the mark on the paper will clearly indicate that the paper has been withdrawn from the author's side. If the editors, reviewers or readers after publication notice that the article (or part of the article) has already been published, that the data in the article has been falsified, or that the research was not conducted in accordance with ethical principles, the editorial board will consider the report and if it is determined that the authors have violated ethical principles they will withdraw the paper, and the paper will be marked with "retracted by the editor". The link to the withdrawn paper will still be active, but the mark on the paper will not clearly indicate that the paper has been withdrawn by the editor. Any procedure for withdrawing a published article is done in accordance with the COPE guidelines.

9. Authorship and AI

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, their use is expanding fast even in research publications. SLPD Journal joins Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and other authorities in stating that AI tools cannot be listed as an author of a paper. AI tools cannot meet the requirements for authorship as they cannot take responsibility for the content of the submitted work, cannot affirm the presence or absence of conflict of interest nor manage copyright and license agreements.

Use of AI tools

The SLPD Journal will not accept manuscripts that use AI tools (chatbots) as sources as the content generated by LLMs is not traceable or reproducible.

Acceptable uses of AI tools include proofreading, style check, translation, image improvement to increase quality.

Authors who use AI tools in the process of their research, such as for collection and/or analysis of data or for production of images and graphics, or software codes must transparently disclose in the initial part of the paper which AI tool and how it was used. The use of linguistic tools must be disclosed in the Acknowledgement section. Authors bear full responsibility for the content of their manuscript, including the parts produced by an AI tool, and are thus liable for any breach of publication ethics.

Reviewers and AI

Reviewers are responsible for keeping the confidentiality of data through the process of evaluation until the final decision is made. This must be kept in mind if using any LLM tools. Large parts of manuscript containing confidential information must not be copied into LLM-based tools. Reviewers are allowed to use only the tools that can assist in formatting language and style, they must not use AI tools to generate review reports.

10. Reviewers’ guidelines

10.1. General Information for Reviewers

The SLPD Journal Editorial Board strongly praise the efforts, time and reviewers’ knowledge devoted to the Journal. It is important that the manuscripts sent to reviewers are critically evaluated for compliance with the following criteria: novelty, scientific relevance and importance to the specific field and strong evidence for the conclusions that are drawn.

All submitted manuscripts are reviewed by Editors-in-Chief and/or in specific cases, where more consultations are to be provided, the Editorial Board for relevancy to meet our editorial criteria. Manuscripts retained for review are sent to at least two reviewers, chosen by Editors-in-Chief. The SLPD Journal does not accept Authors’ suggestions about independent reviewers, who may be considered by editorial team after checking their suitability. The journal applies anonymized double-blind-peer review, in which reviewers do not know the identity of authors, and the authors do not know the identity of reviewers.

Based on the reviews, the Editor-in-Chief: accept the manuscript with or without minor revision, invite the author(s) to revise the manuscript before a final decision is reached, or reject the manuscript based on the reviews due to lack of novelty, insufficient conceptual advance or major technical and/or interpretational issues. Reviewers may recommend a particular course of action in their confidential comments to the Editor, but should bear in mind that the Editors-in-Chief may have to decide based on conflicting advice. Furthermore, editorial decisions are based on an evaluation of the strengths of the arguments raised by each review and by the author(s). The most useful reviewer’s reports, therefore, are those that set out clear, substantiated arguments and might include a recommendation of a course of action directed to the authors.

10.2. Receiving a Manuscript for Review

The selection of reviewers is critical to the review process and we expect the reviewers to treat this request as confidential. Manuscripts submitted for the SLPD Journal are evaluated through a double-blind-peer review. Please protect the manuscript provided to you for review from any form of exploitation. The reviewers are selected based on the Editor’s recommendation or by searching the databases with selected peer-reviewed articles or reviewers list. Upon receiving an invitation letter with the manuscript to review, through the SLPD Journal OJS system, please do the following:

read the title and abstract of the manuscript to determine whether it falls within your field of expertise,
click on one of the links received in the invitation e-mail to either accept the review, decline the review or download the manuscript through the SLPD Journal's online submission system (OJS),
log in to the SLPD Journal's OJS system with the username and password provided in the invitation e-mail and check your details (especially contact details and field of expertise) and correct or add them if needed,
double-check the manuscript Title page and the Acknowledgements section to determine whether there is any conflict of interest for you (with the authors, their institution or their funding resources) and whether you can review the manuscript impartially,
contact the Editor-in-Chief for instructions if you have either a time problem or a conflict of interest, so that your deadline can be extended or review assignment cancelled,
fill in the reviewer's form and write your comments,
before sending the comments remove your name from the part intended for reviewer authors. There is a section 'Confidential to Editor', where you can write additional comments intended only for the Editor,
if you wish to write the comments directly into the downloaded text of the manuscript check the settings on your computer (under Properties) to see whether your name appears next to the comments and disable it in a was to protect your anonymity.
it is important that you choose the category of the paper:
- An original scientific paper presents the results of original research that has not previously been published in full or in preliminary form.
- A preliminary communication contains at least one new scientific fact or result that requires immediate publication, but it should not contain sufficient detail to test the results described, as is the case with original scientific articles.
- A review article contains an overall overview of recent and current research in a particular area. Articles in this category are surveys in nature that should include critical references and evaluations. The references must be complete enough to provide a good insight into the subject matter.
- A professional paper does not have to be based on original research, but should contribute to the application of well-known research findings and present theoretical concepts.
- A conference paper is a presentation from a scientific conference, previously delivered at such a conference, published in the form of a full paper and peer reviewed.

for any inquiries or technical problems contact the Editorial Office. If Editorial Office, after receiving the revised version from authors, feels that reviewer's second opinion is needed, the revised manuscript may be sent to the same reviewer for re-evaluation. The procedure through the OJS system for re-evaluation is the same as for the first evaluation.

The primary purpose of the review is to provide the Editors with the information needed to reach a decision, but they should also instruct the author(s) on how to strengthen their manuscript if revision is a possibility.

The reviewer should answer the following questions:

How familiar is the reviewer with the topic of the paper?
The relevance and scope of the literature used in the paper
Argumentation and logical structure of work
Selection and application of methodology
Writing style and comprehensibility
Do the title, abstract and key terms correspond to the content of the paper? Is there a need, or an opportunity for improvement?
Briefly explain the importance of the topic the author is dealing with. What would the reviewer identify as strong aspects of the paper? What would the reviewer say are its weaker sides?
Write down the Review text
Provide the recommendations for publishing
Suggest the categorization of the paper?
Provide comments to editors (not visible to authors)

Based on the evaluation according to the above criteria, the following decisions can be made:

Accept the paper - only if there are no requirements for revision.
Minor revision - if minor changes are requested that can be completed in a relatively short timeframe (15–20 days), e.g. language revision, improvement of the discussion, formatting the text and references according to the instructions, inclusion of additional data, minor revision of data presentation, and similar.
Major revision - if a more thorough revision is required, e.g. more focused introduction, a more detailed description of materials and methods, revision of tables and figures, a more in-depth discussion, more concise conclusions, inclusion of more recent and relevant references, if there is insufficient information regarding ethics approval (where applicable), funding, conflicts of interest, use of AI tools, or authors' contributions. The authors should be able to complete the revision within a reasonable timeframe (up to 30 days).
If the required revision is so extensive that it cannot be completed within a reasonable timeframe, requires additional experiments or extensive restructuring of the entire manuscript, and the manuscript still merits publication, a rejection with the possibility of resubmission is advised (please write it in your comments to editor).
Reject for publication - if the manuscript is not acceptable for publication due to repetition of already published data, lack of novelty or relevance, major errors in the premise or methodology, breach of research integrity, lack of ethics approval (where applicable), and similar.

When writing the comments to the Journal OJS submission system, if the reviewer needs to enclose a document with additional comments, he/she is advised to check whether the document is attached before clicking the “CONFIRM” button.

If the reviewer needs more information about the review process, the Editorial Board advises to consult Peer Review Toolkit compiled by the Peer Review Committee of EASE.

Reviewers' recommendations are gratefully received by the editor; however, since editorial decisions are based on evaluations derived from several sources, reviewers should not expect the editor to consider every recommendation.

10.3. Use of AI tools

10.4. Conflict of Interest

The SLPD Journal rely on the reviewers to detect a breach of publication policy or ethical conduct before publication. Some of the items the reviewers should be alert for include plagiarism, missing or incomplete attestation, dual submission and/or publication. We try to avoid referees who: have recent or ongoing collaborations with the authors, have commented on drafts of the manuscript, are in direct competition, have a history of dispute with the authors, or have a financial interest in the outcome. However, the Editorial Office may not be aware of the existence of such a situation, therefore we expect the reviewer to inform us about the possibility of a conflict of interest.

If members of Editorial Board or their close collaborators appear as authors submitting to the journal, they are then excluded from the entire process of evaluation. According to Journal's policy, manuscripts are never sent to reviewers from the same institution as the author(s).

10.5. Publication Policy and Ethical Considerations

In spite of our best efforts to identify breaches of publication policy or ethical conduct, such as plagiarism or author conflict of interest, the referees who are more familiar with the field are more likely to recognise such problems and should alert the Editors of any potential problems in this regard. In summary, the reviewers are encouraged to communicate suspicion of policy or ethical problems directly to the Editor, who will follow the guidelines recommended by COPE.

For further information you can consult COPE Ethical Guidance for Peer Reviewers. Under no circumstances the reviewers should contact the potential author(s) directly.

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