Submission standards, ethics, and peer review expectations.

General submission requirements

Authors submitting to Shodh Samvad should ensure that the paper is original, unpublished, and not under review elsewhere. Submissions should be professionally written, plagiarism free, and relevant to law, psychology, humanities, or allied multidisciplinary areas.

• Recommended structure: title, abstract, keywords, introduction, literature review, methodology, analysis, conclusion, and references
• Abstract length: 150 to 250 words with 4 to 6 keywords
• Research articles: 3,000 to 6,000 words excluding footnotes
• Short articles: 1,200 to 3,500 words excluding footnotes

Formatting and citation standards

• Main text: Times New Roman, size 12
• Footnotes: size 10
• Spacing: 1.5 line spacing with justified alignment
• Margins: 1 inch on all sides
• Accepted file formats: Microsoft Word and PDF
• Law papers: Bluebook, 21st edition
• Psychology and humanities papers: APA, 7th edition

Plagiarism, ethics, and peer review

Hindi manuscripts should use clear academic language and a Unicode-compatible Hindi font. Headings, subheadings, spacing, margins, numbering, and figure or table references should remain consistent throughout the paper.

• Similarity should remain below 10% as per the stated policy
• All quotations, references, and secondary material must be properly cited
• Human-participant research should include appropriate ethical approval and consent
• Data fabrication, falsification, and misrepresentation are prohibited
• Submissions must remain original human-authored research

Shodh Samvad follows a double-blind peer review model. Papers are anonymized before review and are evaluated for originality, relevance, methodological strength, and contribution.

• Expected review feedback window: 4 to 6 weeks
• Possible decisions: accept, minor revisions, major revisions, or reject