Report of the Annual Editorial Board Meeting, 2022 held on 7th April, 2022

CMRU JOURNAL FOR CONTEMPORARY LEGAL AFFAIRS

ANNUAL EDITORIAL BOARD MEETING REPORT

1. Members present in the meeting

The first Editorial Board meeting was held at 3.00 PM on 07.04.2022 in online mode on the zoom platform and was attended by the following members-

 

EDITORIAL BOARD (Academia)	EDITORIAL BOARD (Industry)
•  Prof. (Dr.) Manoj Kumar Sinha	•  Justice A.V. Chandrashekara
Director,  Indian  Law  Institute,  New	Former	Judicial  Member,	Karnataka
Delhi	State	Administrative	Tribunal,
•  Prof. (Dr.) P. Ishwara Bhat	Bengaluru,
Vice Chancellor, Karnataka State Law	Former Judge, High Court of Karnataka
University,  Former  Vice-Chancellor,	•  Prof. V. Sudhish Pai
WBNUJS, Kolkata	Senior   Advocate,   High   Court   of
•  Prof. (Dr.) R. Venkata Rao	Karnataka,   Acclaimed   Author   and
Chairperson,  Vivekananda  School  of	Eminent Jurist
Law  &  Legal  Studies,  New  Delhi
Former Vice-Chancellor, National Law
School of India University
•  Prof. (Dr.) Shashikala Gurpur
Director, Symbiosis Law School, Pune,
Dean,  Faculty  of  Law,  Symbiosis
International (Deemed University)

 

Prof. (Dr.) T.R. Subramanya, Dean, School of Legal Studies and Editor-in-Chief along with the staff editors, Dr. Chanjana Elsa Philip, Mr. Sreenidhi K.R., Ms. Nidhi Saroj and Ms. Parul Raghuvanshi were present in the meeting.

• Prof. (Dr.) T.R. Subramanya, welcomed the Hon’ble Members to the meeting thereby commencing the proceedings.

• Agenda

The First JCLA Editorial Board Meet discussed on the following:

1. Report reading:

A comprehensive report of the previous edition comprising details related to both, the content and the process was presented by staff editor, Dr. Chanjana Elsa Philip

• Discussion on incorporating peer reviewed system:

A presentation on establishing a policy to oversee the execution of the peer review mechanism for the forthcoming editions was made by Ms. Parul Raghuwanshi, staff editor, JCLA.

All the members of the board agreed upon the need to establish a double-blind peer review policy. Prof. (Dr.) Shashikala Gurpur suggested that appropriate criteria for accepting or rejecting the papers must be included in such a policy along with the eligibility criteria to select peer reviewers.

Prof. (Dr.) Manoj Kumar Sinha suggested that there must be a defined process for review. It must include receiving the paper and have a preliminary internal quality check of the paper. This may be done in the light of the submission guidelines, plagiarism check put forth by the JCLA editorial board. Accordingly, articles can be categorized for the peer review process . He also suggested that there must be a specified format for comments of peer reviewers. The staff editorial board shall maintain a sheet which will comprise comments for authors given by peer reviewers. However, the names of the reviewers shall not be disclosed to the authors or vice versa.

Mr. Justice A.V. Chandrashekhara suggested that the policy must have decisive parameters for preliminary quality check and for peer review.

• A presentation on framing and adopting certain policies for the forthcoming journals was made by Ms. Nidhi Saroj.

Prof. (Dr.) P. Ishwara Bhat suggested that the authorship policy be drafted so as to ensure that the author retains the right to reproduce the work in any other format post publication in the CMRU JCLA.

• Open discussion and suggestions:

1. Prof. (Dr.) Shashikala Gurpur has given the following suggestions:

She suggested including peer reviewers as guest editors in the journal’s Editorial board. She further suggested to prepare a flowchart for the process of peer review so as to avoid any further confusion.

• Shri. V. Sudhish Pai has given the following suggestions:

He suggested that we prepare comprehensive guidelines regarding any conflict of views with respect to comments of the reviewer made by the peer reviewers and the author.

• Prof. (Dr.) Manoj Kumar Sinha has given the following suggestions:

He suggested incentivising the peer reviewers to make sure that quality is maintained. Moreover, he also suggested ensuring timely publication.

• Mr. Justice A.V. Chandrashekhara has given the following suggestions:

He suggested that the authorship policy be lenient towards the authors in respecting their contributions and further suggested incorporating strict guidelines to ensure quality of the journal.

• Prof. (Dr.) R. Venkat Rao has given the following suggestions:

He suggested incorporating articles from the area of private international law in every issue of the journal.He also suggested bringing out ‘special issues’ of the journal.

• Prof. (Dr.) P. Ishwara Bhat has given the following suggestions:

He suggested the incorporation of an author centric approach in determining copyrights.

In conclusion Prof. (Dr.) T.R. Subramanya, clarified that it may not be feasible to have issues specific to a particular sub-domain as there aren’t many contributors willing to write on niche areas due to which maintaining quality and high standards will be compromised. Therefore, the journal has thus far, refrained from bringing out special issues except for one in Aviation and Space Law.

• The vote of thanks was proposed by Mr. Sreenidhi K.R.