Data Sharing & Reproducibility

Verdict: Journal of Law Science is committed to promoting research transparency, methodological rigor, and reproducibility through responsible data sharing and clear methodological reporting. This policy enables readers to evaluate, verify, and, where appropriate, reproduce or build upon published findings. It applies to all submitted manuscripts, including doctrinal and normative legal research, empirical socio-legal studies, qualitative and quantitative research, comparative legal studies, case-law analysis, systematic reviews, bibliometric studies, and theoretical and conceptual legal research.

Data-sharing and reproducibility requirements are applied proportionately to the research design, established legal research practices, ethical standards, applicable laws, and the sensitivity of the materials involved.


1. Research Data and Supporting Materials

Research data refers to the materials, records, documents, and outputs that support the arguments, analyses, findings, and conclusions presented in a manuscript. Depending on the research design, these materials may include:

  • Legislation, regulations, judicial decisions, court judgments, and other legal documents used in the analysis.
  • Legal research materials, including doctrinal sources, legal commentaries, and records of legal interpretation.
  • Interview transcripts, questionnaires, survey responses, and observation records from empirical socio-legal research.
  • Anonymized datasets and statistical outputs used to examine legal institutions, judicial practices, public attitudes, or the implementation of laws.
  • Research instruments, interview protocols, questionnaires, coding frameworks, and analytical procedures.
  • Search strategies, screening records, inclusion and exclusion criteria, and data-extraction tables used in systematic reviews.
  • Bibliographic datasets, analytical files, and computational scripts used in bibliometric or quantitative legal research.
  • Supplementary materials necessary to assess or verify the reported findings.

Authors should identify the materials relevant to their research and determine which can be shared responsibly, taking into account their availability, legal status, confidentiality, and applicable restrictions.


2. Data Availability Statement

All submitted manuscripts must include a Data Availability Statement explaining whether the materials supporting the research findings are available and, where applicable, how they can be accessed. Depending on the nature of the research, the statement may indicate that:

  • Supporting data and materials are publicly available through a recognized repository or an accessible institutional source.
  • Relevant legal materials are available through official government websites, court databases, legislation portals, or other identifiable public sources.
  • Supporting materials are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request, subject to applicable legal, ethical, and confidentiality requirements.
  • Data cannot be publicly shared because of legal restrictions, confidentiality obligations, privacy protections, intellectual property rights, or other legitimate limitations.
  • The research is based exclusively on publicly available legal materials and does not involve a separate dataset requiring deposit.

Authors must ensure that the Data Availability Statement accurately reflects the actual availability of the materials. Access conditions and restrictions must be explained clearly, and any repository links or identifiers provided must be valid.


3. Data Deposition and Repository Recommendations

The journal encourages authors to deposit shareable research data and supporting materials in reliable repositories, such as Zenodo, OSF, Figshare, or appropriate institutional and disciplinary repositories. Authors should provide persistent identifiers (e.g., DOIs), adequate metadata and documentation, and clear links between datasets and publications. Data management should follow the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), where appropriate and subject to applicable restrictions


4. Methodological Transparency and Reproducibility

Authors must provide sufficient methodological information to allow readers to understand how the research was conducted and how its conclusions were reached.

For doctrinal and normative legal research, authors should identify the legal sources examined, explain the criteria for selecting those sources, describe the interpretive or analytical approach, and provide accurate citations to relevant legislation, judicial decisions, and other authorities.

For empirical socio-legal research, authors should describe the research design, participant selection, data collection procedures, analytical methods, and relevant ethical safeguards. Where quantitative or computational methods are used, authors should report the analytical procedures and provide supporting materials or code where appropriate and permissible.

For comparative legal studies, authors should identify the jurisdictions examined, explain the basis for comparison, and clarify the criteria used to select legal systems, legislation, judicial decisions, or other relevant materials.

For systematic reviews and bibliometric studies, authors should report the databases consulted, search strategies, search dates, selection criteria, screening procedures, and methods of analysis sufficiently clearly to support independent assessment.

The journal recognizes that reproducibility varies across legal research methods. Authors are not required to reproduce an identical result where the research depends on interpretive legal reasoning or context-specific judgments. Instead, they must provide a transparent and verifiable account of the sources, procedures, and reasoning underlying their conclusions.


5. Data Citation and Source Verification

Authors must cite all legal sources, research data, and supporting materials accurately and consistently with the applicable legal citation style or the journal's author guidelines.

References to legislation, regulations, judicial decisions, official reports, public datasets, and other documentary sources should contain sufficient information to enable readers to identify and, where possible, retrieve the original materials.

Authors must verify the accuracy and authenticity of legal authorities and must not fabricate, misrepresent, or selectively alter legal sources, research records, or analytical results. Where a source is unavailable, restricted, or no longer accessible, the author should identify the limitation as clearly as possible.


6. Ethical, Legal, and Confidential Data

Data sharing must comply with applicable laws, research ethics requirements, informed consent obligations, privacy protections, intellectual property rights, confidentiality duties, and third-party restrictions.

Authors must protect personal information, confidential interview records, privileged legal communications, sensitive case information, and other materials that cannot lawfully or ethically be disclosed. Particular care must be taken with information concerning litigants, victims, witnesses, minors, vulnerable individuals, and other persons whose identities or circumstances require protection.

Where research involves court records, legal case files, interviews, surveys, or institutional records that are not publicly accessible, authors must ensure that any disclosure or sharing complies with the relevant authorization, confidentiality, and data-protection requirements.

When data cannot be shared publicly for legitimate legal, ethical, privacy, intellectual property, or confidentiality reasons, authors must explain the restrictions in their Data Availability Statement. Where feasible, they should consider responsible alternatives, such as anonymized datasets, redacted documents, aggregated findings, or descriptions of the analytical procedures.

The journal does not require authors to disclose materials where doing so would violate applicable legal obligations, court restrictions, confidentiality duties, or ethical commitments.


7. Data Retention and Editorial Verification

Authors are responsible for retaining the research materials necessary to substantiate their published findings, subject to applicable legal, ethical, and institutional requirements.

The journal may request access to relevant supporting materials, source documentation, analytical procedures, or clarification of the research methods when reasonably necessary to assess the accuracy, transparency, or integrity of a submission.

Any materials provided for editorial verification will be handled confidentially and will not automatically be made publicly available. Authors must ensure that the provision of such materials does not violate legal restrictions, privacy obligations, or third-party rights.

If concerns arise regarding the authenticity, accuracy, or reproducibility of published findings, the journal may request further information and take appropriate action in accordance with its publication ethics and research misconduct policies.


8. Responsibilities of Authors

Authors are responsible for:

  • Providing an accurate Data Availability Statement.
  • Reporting research methods and analytical procedures transparently.
  • Citing and verifying legal authorities and supporting materials.
  • Sharing research data and materials where appropriate and legally permissible.
  • Protecting confidential, personal, privileged, and otherwise restricted information.
  • Obtaining the necessary permissions or authorizations before sharing third-party materials.
  • Retaining supporting research materials in accordance with applicable requirements.
  • Correcting inaccurate statements concerning data availability or research procedures when identified.

Failure to comply with this policy may result in a request for clarification, a request for revision, rejection of a submission, or further editorial action where concerns about research integrity arise.


9. Policy Implementation

This policy applies to all authors submitting manuscripts to Verdict: Journal of Law Science. Its implementation takes into account the different requirements of doctrinal legal research, empirical socio-legal research, comparative legal analysis, and other approaches to legal scholarship.

The journal seeks to balance transparency and reproducibility with the protection of legal rights, confidentiality, privacy, research participants, and legitimate restrictions on access to information. Data sharing is encouraged where appropriate, but it must never require authors to violate applicable legal or ethical obligations.