Aim and Scope

The study of inheritance and the impact of the genome on various biological processes is well documented. However, the majority of discoveries are still to come. A new era is seeing major developments in the function and variability of the genome, the use of genetic and genomic tools and the analysis of the genetic basis of various biological phenomena.

The journal Lex Genetica aims to foster the advance of legal knowledge with the goal of understanding and improving all aspects of legal regulation of genomic research. It focuses on practice-changing information, the development of genetics legislation, and the impact of bioethics policies on all areas of society.

LG’s priorities are to:

• encourage collaborations
• encourage diverse readership across legal and government/policy sectors
• stimulate innovation in legal practice
• include content that is current, forward thinking and that shapes the future of law and genetics in Russia and across the globe.

LG contains original and response articles, reviews, essays, and commentaries on a wide range of topics, including bioethics, genomic research, reproductive technologies, stem cells, enhancement, patent law, and food and drug regulation.

LG features articles that provide in-depth analysis of topical and developing issues in law, genetics, and bioethics. LG publishes manuscripts on subjects of domestic, regional and international law. It also welcomes comparative, doctrinal, critical, and interdisciplinary articles.

LG invites submission on a broad range of interdisciplinary issues in law including, but not limited to:

• Reproductive technologies
• Genetic and genomic testing
• Intellectual property in the biosciences
• Protection of research subjects in research
• Bioscience funding and policy
• Food and drug law
• Application of genetic technology
• And more

Section Policies

Lex Genetica: Theoretical Issues

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica and Agriculture: World's Best Practice

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Comparative Legal Analysis

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Expert Opinion

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Event Digest

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Private-Law Dimension

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Public -Law Dimension

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Аcademic Digest

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Questions of Theory and Philosophy

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Methodical Piggy Bank

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Tribune of the Young Scientist

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Event Digest

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Lex Genetica: Methodical Piggy Bank

Open Submissions

Indexed

Peer Reviewed

Publication Frequency

Quarterly

Open Access Policy

This is an open access journal. All articles are made freely available to readers immediatly upon publication.

Our open access policy is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition - it means that articles have free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.

For more information please read BOAI statement.

Archiving

• Russian State Library (RSL)
• National Electronic-Information Consortium (NEICON)

Peer-Review

A bilateral anonymous ("blind") peer review method is mandatory for processing of all scientific manuscripts submitted to the Lex Genetica Editorial Staff. This implies that neither the reviewer is aware of the authorship of the manuscript, nor the author maintains any contact with the reviewer.

1. Members of the editorial board and leading Russian and international experts in corresponding areas of life sciences, invited as independent readers, perform peer reviews. We aim to limit the review process to 30 days, though in some cases the schedule may be adjusted at the reviewer’s request.
2. Reviewer has an option to abnegate the assessment should any conflict of interests arise that may affect perception or interpretation of the manuscript. Upon the scrutiny, the reviewer is expected to present the editorial board with one of the following recommendations:
   - to accept the paper in its present state;
   - to invite the author to revise their manuscript to address specific concerns before final decision is reached;
   - that final decision be reached following further reviewing by another specialist;
   - to reject the manuscript outright.
3. If the reviewer has recommended any refinements, the editorial staff would suggest the author either to implement the corrections, or to dispute them reasonably. Authors are kindly required to limit their revision to 2 months and resubmit the adapted manuscript within this period for final evaluation.
4. We politely request that the editor to be notified verbally or in writing should the author decide to refuse from publishing the manuscript. In case the author fails to do so within 3 months since receiving a copy of the initial review, the editorial board takes the manuscript off the register and notifies the author accordingly.
5. If author and reviewers meet insoluble contradictions regarding revision of the manuscript, the editor-in-chief resolves the conflict by his own authority.
6. The editorial board reaches final decision to reject a manuscript on the hearing according to reviewers’ recommendations, and duly notifies the authors of their decision via e-mail. The board does not accept previously rejected manuscripts for re-evaluation.
7. Upon the decision to accept the manuscript for publishing, the editorial staff notifies the authors of the scheduled date of publication.
8. Kindly note that positive review does not guarantee the acceptance, as final decision in all cases lies with the editorial board. By his authority, editor-in-chief rules final solution of every conflict.
9. Original reviews of submitted manuscripts remain deposited for 5 years.

Publishing Ethics

All the submitted papers are peer-reviewed by minimal 2 reviewers considering the originality, research content and ethical matters.

The compliance with the international ethical standards is of great significance for the all parties: authors, editors, reviewers, publishers.

This code is based on the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publications of the Committee of publication ethics.

1. Ethical responsibilities of authors

Authors should refrain from misrepresenting research results which could damage the trust in the journal, the professionalism of scientific authorship, and ultimately the entire scientific endeavor.

Maintaining integrity of the research and its presentation can be achieved by following the rules of good scientific practice, which include:

• The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration.
• The manuscript has not been published previously (partly or in full), unless the new work concerns an expansion of previous work (please provide transparency on the re-use of material to avoid the hint of text-recycling (‘self-plagiarism’)).
• A single study is not split up into several parts to increase the quantity of submissions and submitted to various journals or to one journal over time.
• No data have been fabricated or manipulated (including images) to support your conclusions.
• No data, text, or theories by others are presented as if they were the author’s own (‘plagiarism’). Proper acknowledgements to other works must be given (this includes material that is closely copied (near verbatim), summarized and/or paraphrased), quotation marks are used for verbatim copying of material, and permissions are secured for material that is copyrighted.
• Consent to submit has been received explicitly from all co-authors, as well as from the responsible authorities - tacitly or explicitly - at the institute/organization where the work has been carried out, before the work is submitted.
• Authors whose names appear on the submission have contributed sufficiently to the scientific work and therefore share collective responsibility and accountability for the results.
• Authors are strongly advised to ensure the correct author group, corresponding author, and order of authors at submission. Changes of authorship or in the order of authors are not accepted after acceptance of a manuscript.
• Adding and/or deleting authors at revision stage may be justifiably warranted. A letter must accompany the revised manuscript to explain the role of the added and/or deleted author(s). Further documentation may be required to support your request.
• Requests for addition or removal of authors as a result of authorship disputes after acceptance are honored after formal notification by the institute or independent body and/or when there is agreement between all authors.
• Upon request authors should be prepared to send relevant documentation or data in order to verify the validity of the results. This could be in the form of raw data, samples, records, etc. Sensitive information in the form of confidential or proprietary data is excluded.

If there is a suspicion of misconduct, the journal will carry out an investigation following the COPE guidelines. If, after investigation, the allegation seems to raise valid concerns, the accused author will be contacted and given an opportunity to address the issue. If misconduct has been established beyond reasonable doubt, this may result in the Editor-in-Chief’s implementation of the following measures, including, but not limited to:

• If the article is still under consideration, it may be rejected and returned to the author.
• If the article has already been published online, depending on the nature and severity of the infraction, either an erratum will be placed with the article or in severe cases retraction of the article will occur. The reason must be given in the published erratum or retraction note. Please note that retraction means that the paper is maintained on the platform, watermarked “retracted” and explanation for the retraction is provided in a note linked to the watermarked article.
• The author’s institution may be informed.

2. Compliance with ethical standards

To ensure objectivity and transparency in research and to ensure that accepted principles of ethical and professional conduct have been followed, authors should include information regarding sources of funding, potential conflicts of interest (financial or non-financial), informed consent if the research involved human participants.

Authors must include the potential conflicts of interest and sources of funding (if applicable) in a separate section entitled “Conflict of interest” or “Acknowledgements”, respectively, before the References when submitting a paper: The corresponding author should prepare to collect documentation of compliance with ethical standards and send if requested during peer review or after publication.

The Editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not comply with the above-mentioned guidelines. The author will beheld responsible for false statements or failure to fulfill the abovementioned guidelines.

Founder

• Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), Moscow, Russian Federation

Author fees

Publication in “Lex Genetica" is free of charge for all the authors.

The journal doesn't have any Article processing charges.

The journal doesn't have any Article submission charges.

Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a reviewer’s own research without the express written consent of the author. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage.

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.

Plagiarism detection

“Lex Genetica" use native russian-language plagiarism detection software Antiplagiat to screen the submissions. If plagiarism is identified, the COPE guidelines on plagiarism will be followed.

Preprint and Postprint Policy

Prior to acceptance and publication in “Lex Genetica", authors may make their submissions available as preprints on personal or public websites.

As part of submission process, authors are required to confirm that the submission has not been previously published, nor has been submitted. After a manuscript has been published in “Lex Genetica" we suggest that the link to the article on journal's website is used when the article is shared on personal or public websites.

Glossary (by SHERPA)

Revenue Sources

The publication of the journal is financed by the Founder.

CrossMark Policy

CrossMark is a multi-publisher initiative from Crossref, provides a standard way for readers to locate the authoritative version of an article or other published content. By applying the CrossMark logo, journal “Lex Genetica" is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Clicking the CrossMark logo on a document will tell you its current status and may also give you additional publication-record information about the document.