About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The University of Bologna Law Review is a student-run, diamond open access and double blind peer-review Law journal owned by the Department of Legal Studies of the University of Bologna (Italy) and published by Alma Diamond, Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna.

The main purpose of the journal concerns being a qualified research tool for practitioners, scholars, students, legislators, and others interested in legal studies.

The Journal releases two Call for Submission/Papers per year and publishes two issues per year (one Volume), accordingly.

Each Issue is focused on multiple original aspects of legal phenomenon in national and/or international perspective or innovative cutting-edge topics related to Legal Studies conducted by means of strong methodology and in-depth (inter)disciplinary research:  UBLR is a generalist Law Journal.  

All publications are exclusively in English.

This Journal is currently included in the scientific journals' list (Area 12 / Legal Studies) by the Italian National Agency for the Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes (ANVUR), and it is supported (Free Patronage) by the International Chamber of Commerce – Italy.

Editorial Process

All Editorial steps are conducted by the Editorial Team in accordance with the Journal Quality Control and Publication Ethics Code.

past versions (.pdf): 1/2016; 2/2020; 3/2023; 3.1/2024

current version: 4 /2024

PRELIMINARY STEP

All submitted manuscripts that comply with the Author Guidelines and Ethics Code are first promptly anonymized by the Editorial Office. They are then reviewed for conformity by the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Board to ensure alignment with the aims and scope of the University of Bologna Law Review (UBLR/Journal), in order of receipt.  Manuscripts that do not align with the Journal’s interest and/or purposes (see Focus and Scope), on a case-by-case basis are discarded. Additionally, in accordance with the Submissions policy, manuscripts that do not comply with the Publication Rules will be promptly declined (Desk rejection).

While considering the high volume of daily submissions, particularly during the Call for Papers, the Editorial Office will promptly acknowledge receipt of manuscripts (via OJS, email, or Scholastica). Authors will be informed within four weeks of receipt whether their manuscript will proceed to the peer-review stage or has been rejected. 

DOUBLE-BLIND PEER REVIEW STEP

Prior to the peer-review stage, each selected manuscript is compulsory checked by a plagiarism detection software (iThenticate®) and if it does not meet any kind of plagiarism is anonymously sent to (at least) two external, independent and national/international reviewers for the formal peer review (i.e. double-blind peer review) which generally takes up to 6 weeks. The Journal will adopt detection tools which flag AI-generated content in the manuscript during the editorial process. The Editor-in-Chief and/or the Managing Board may rely on the support of the Reviewers' Committee Coordinators in order to assign to each manuscript, the most suitable reviewers in terms of academic specialization and research experience. 

Each Author, whose manuscript is peer-reviewing, will be kept duly informed by the Editorial Office in order to ensure the best transparency and integrity of the whole process as well as any delay regarding the peer-review results. The Editor-in-Chief then makes a decision on extending a Publication Offer based on multiple factors, the feedback of the reviewers being the most relevant one. The decision will then be notified to the Authors as soon as it is taken (meaning that the time needed will usually be longer for manuscripts that are considered eligible for publication with Major revisions).

PRODUCTION AND PUBLICATION STEP

The Production and Publication step (Copyediting, Proofreading and Graphic) is entirely managed by the Editorial Team in accordance with the Author Guidelines. It may be also performed and finalized by means of  software programmes that uses artificial intelligence (AI-assistant). 

The Journal adopts The Bluebook (21st ed.) citation code for all its publications.

Each Author, whose manuscript is managed for the publication, will be kept duly informed by the Editorial Office in order to ensure the best transparency and integrity of the whole process, and a post-print version may be requested to the Editorial Office. 

Each published manuscript is provided with DOI (Digital Object Identifier) released by the Journal, and typeset through LaTeX. LaTeX is free software and is distributed under the LaTeX Project Public License.

The average time for publication is 22 weeks (updated on August, 2024) based on the Journal's Editorial sections managements and prior publications. 

Publication Frequency

The University of Bologna Law Review publishes two issues per year (one Volume).

Calls for Papers are released by means of Announcement in the Journal's homepage as well as in the Journal's social media channels, accordingly:

Terms

- Call for Papers for the Second Issue of the same year of publication: early March - mid April

- Call for Papers for the First Issue of the following year of publication: early September - mid October

The deadlines may be extended upon the Editor-in-Chief decision, only. 

The Issues remain open according to a continuous update mode throughout the semester.

Editorial Sections

OBITER DICTUM: Not Open to Submissions (i.e. Invited Submission) / Indexed / Editorial Review

The Obiter Dictum is the opportunity for the Journal's Advisors and for other selected Scholars to share directly with readers their own thoughts and considerations by focusing in medias res on current social and legal affairs by means of brief and incisive notes.

ARTICLES & ESSAYS: Open to Submissions / Indexed / Peer-Review (Double Blind)

Manuscripts on broad and original aspect of legal phenomenon in national and/or international perspective or cutting-edge topics related to Legal Studies conducted by means of a clear and solid methodology and in-depth (inter)disciplinary research.

NOTES: Open to Submissions / Indexed / Peer-Review (Double Blind)

Short articles focusing on original and specific topics related to Legal Studies conducted by means of a clear and strong methodology and in-depth (inter)disciplinary research.

CONFERENCE PAPERS: Open to Submissions / Indexed / Peer-Review (Double Blind)

Research manuscripts or reports presented at academic panels.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights and the publishing rights. 

Authors are welcome to post pre-submission versions, the original submitted version of the manuscript (preprint) and the final draft post-refereeing (postprint) on a personal website, a collaborative wiki, departmental website, social media websites, institutional repository or non-commercial subject-based repositories (e.g. SSRN). Self-archiving can happen only upon the acceptance of the submission. Pre-print versions (complied with the Journal's editorial criteria) are released to Authors upon request to the Editorial Office. 

Archiving & Repository Policies

As part of AlmaDL Journals, the Journal adopts a strategy to ensure long term preservation of the published content. Please see the archiving policy of the publishing service AlmaDL Journals.

The Journal's Repository Policy for auto-archiving is recorded on Open policy finder.

Publication Fees 

The Journal has neither article submission charges (ASCs) nor processing fees (APCs).

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and search engines:

  • ACNP – Italian Catalogue of Serials
  • BASE – Bielefield Academic Search Engine
  • Copac – National Academic and Specialist Library Catalogue
  • DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
  • EBSCO -  leading provider of research databases...for universities, colleges, hospitals, corporations, government, K12 schools and public libraries worldwide
  • ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
  • ESCI – Web of Science Emerging Sources Citation Index
  • Google Scholar – Academic search engine
  • HeinOnline – Law Journal Library
  • Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals - A subject index to selected law periodicals and essays
  • OpenAlex 
  • ROAD – Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
  • Scopus – The largest database of peer-reviewed literature
  • Sudoc - French National Bibliographic Database for Higher Education and Research
  • Ulrichsweb – Global Serials Directory
  • Worldcat – The world’s largest library catalog
  • JournalTOCs - The biggest searchable collection of scholarly journal Tables of Contents (TOCs)
  • vLEX - The AI-powered legal research platform with the largest collection of legal and regulatory information in the world
  • ZDB - German Union Catalogue of Serials

Quality Control and Publication Ethics Code

All editorial, publishing and reviewing activities of University of Bologna Law Review comply with the Code of Ethics adopted by the AlmaDl Journal Service.

(v.7.1/2025)

The University of Bologna Law Review is committed to attaining the highest publication standards. The prevention of publication malpractice is one of the most important responsibilities of the whole Editorial Board. The Code lays out the UBLR policies set in place to ensure the ethical treatment on behalf of all participants in the peer-review and publication process. The Associate, Visiting and Advisory Editors, as well as Reviewers and Authors are encouraged to study these guidelines and address any questions or concerns to the Editorial Office (bolognalawreview@unibo.it).

These guidelines apply to all manuscripts submitted to the Journal and may be revised at any time by the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board.

The following duties are informed by the COPE “Core Practices”.

Preamble

The University of Bologna Law Review (hereinafter, the Journal) is an open-access, student-run, peer-reviewed legal journal published by the University of Bologna, Department of Legal Studies.

The Journal aims to promote high-quality legal scholarship (among students, academics and professionals), embracing a scientific role of Law in society, and it encourages a genuine dialogue amongst contemporary legal scholars through an interdisciplinary approach to legal phenomenon.

The Journal works in accordance with article 8 of the UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity, articles 21§1 and 33§1 of the Italian Constitution and articles 1§1,3-5,8 of the University of Bologna Statute.

The University of Bologna Law Review is a non-profit journal.

This Preamble should be considered an integral part of the Code, and it should be used as an interpretative criterion for all the articles below.

Part One

Editors

Editorial Board

Duties and Responsibilities

The Editorial Board of the University of Bologna Law Review is comprised of:

  • Editor-in-Chief;
  • Managing Editors;
  • Associate Editors;
  • Visiting Editors;

The whole Editorial Board is responsible for the content of the Journal and strives to ensure the integrity of all published works, through:

- A blind peer-review process, in order to ensure the high quality of all publications;

- A full respect of the academic record;

- A steady and real motivation to improve and reassess the Journal’s standards in the light of new scientific criteria;

- A cogent criticism of work published in the Journal in order to improve a debate amongst scholars.

In order to meet these requirements the Editorial Board:

- ensures that all published article, essays and case notes have been analysed by suitably qualified Reviewers;

- adopts internal processes that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research results;

- discloses all relevant information regarding the Author’s role, research grants or other scholarly work that may be connected to the works published in the Journal to the Readers.

The Editorial Board ensures that the Author’s work:

- will firstly be considered by either the Editor-in-Chief or a member of the Managing Board in order to ensure that it complies with the Journal subjects and aims. Furthermore, the Managing Board ensures that each manuscript submitted to the Journal will be reviewed for its intellectual content without having regard to the Author’s sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship and political beliefs.

- will be evaluated by two (at least) independent and external Reviewers in accordance with the blind peer review process whereby Authors do not know Reviewers and vice versa (double-blind);

- will be accepted or rejected by the Editor-in-Chief following the Reviewer’s feedback as well as the compatibility with the Journal aims;

- will be managed by the Editorial Board which ensures that, throughout each publishing step, submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding Author(s), and Reviewers, as appropriate. This will ensure that confidentiality is respected and that the submissions are protected from misuse whilst in peer-review. Both Managing and Associate Editors have a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers submitted to the University of Bologna Law Review.
Both Managing Editors and Associate Editors must submit a conflict of interest declaration with the submitted manuscript as well as those of the Staff, Authors, Reviewers and Editorial Board members.
Both Managing Editors and Associate Editors have an internal process for handling submissions in accordance with the main Regulation of the Journal, the Open Access aims, the Indexing, Archiving and Abstracting Policies.
Visiting Editors are subject to the same duties and responsibilities as the Associate Editors.

- will be protected by the Italian intellectual property laws and international conventions, as well as the Journal’s individual data protection policy.

Managing Board

Duties and Responsibilities

The Managing Board is comprised of the Editor-in-Chief, the Vice Editor(s)-in-Chief and all Managing Editors.

The Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editors lead the Journal’s editorial policy; they are supported by the Faculty Advisor and the Editorial Advisor in the day-to-day management.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with Managing Editors, are responsible for the selection and the publication of the articles submitted to the Journal. However, the Editor-in-Chief is the ultimate authority and has responsibility for the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief respects the Journal’s constituents (Readers, Authors, Reviewers, Editorial Staff), and works to ensure the honesty and integrity of the Journal’s contents and continuous qualitative improvement.

The decision of the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Editors whether or not to accept a paper for publication is mainly based on the relevance and originality of its subject and whether the submission is considered suitable by the qualified external Reviewers. The Editor-in-Chief’s decision may be constrained by the limited space available in each issue, as well as by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and confirmed plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief will ensure that contents are published on a timely basis, following the stated frequency (i.e. 1 issue per semester), the Publication and Section Policies.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with Managing Editors, will take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material published in the Journal in accordance with the OJS Editorial and Publishing Process.

The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for securing timely, independent and anonymous peer-review from suitably qualified Reviewers who possess no competing interests. Both the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Board are responsible for ensuring that the Journal has access to an adequate number of competent Reviewers.

The Editor-in-chief, together with the Reviewers’ Committee Coordinators, will ensure that appropriate Reviewers are selected for each manuscript submitted to the Journal.

In addition to the Author’s Guidelines, the Editor-in-Chief, together with the Managing Editors, will provide guidance to Authors to encourage the accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing and the use of appropriate bibliographical guidelines and checklists.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with Managing Editors, will ensure that the material submitted to the Journal remains confidential while under review. They shall also guarantee that the personal data is kept confidential.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with the Technical Staff of the Digital Library of the University of Bologna (AlmaDL), will take all reasonable steps to guarantee that the published material and its metadata are securely stored and correctly indexed and that all articles are published in open access, freely available to everyone in accordance with the Creative Commons License (CC-BY) and the Open Access aims. Permanent identifiers as DOI guarantee the long-term tracking and preservation of articles.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with Managing Editors, are committed to publishing corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies, when necessary.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with Managing Editors, must be ready to justify any important deviations from the abovementioned editorial process.

The Editor-in-Chief, together with the Managing Editors, will respond promptly to complaints, and will ensure that there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further. Complains and appeals can be sent to the Editorial Office email address (bolognalawreview@unibo.it).

Part Two

Advisors

Duties and Responsibilities

The Advisory Board is the guarantor of the scientific quality and integrity of the Journal. It follows the development and oversees the implementation of the Journal's scientific mission.

The Advisory Board has representative functions aimed at the enhancement of the image of the Journal and at the dissemination of its results achieved, both in Italy and abroad.

Furthermore, it has consultative and directorial functions, through assessing the scientific approach of the editorial policy and by supporting both the Editor-in-Chief and the Managing Board.

Each Advisor can be either an independent and highly qualified scholar in his/her field of research or a leading professional in the legal subjects, or professional fields related to the legal domain. The Editor-in-Chief may appoint an Advisor at any time throughout the year, following a suggestion by the Managing Board.

The role of the Advisor is open-ended and unremunerated; it expires with death, resignation, or is forfeited due to a lack of collaboration with the Editorial Board for one full year.

Part Three

Authors

Duties and Responsibilities

Authors are asked to follow the Author’s Guidelines published by the Journal, therefore ensuring the accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing.

Authors are responsible for the articles they submit: they must ensure the originality of their works, and must be aware of the consequences that derive from their misconduct in terms of copyright infringement and plagiarism (direct, indirect and auto-plagiarism). Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism constitute unethical publishing behaviour and the Journal reserves the right to evaluate issues of plagiarism and redundancy on a case-by-case basis. The Author(s) should not submit concurrent manuscripts (or manuscripts essentially describing the same subject matter) to multiple Journals. The Journal adopts a detection plagiarism policy by means of professional IT software. Each manuscript is checked by the plagiarism detection software before the blind peer-review.

Authors must ensure that any co-author has affirmed the final version of the paper and has agreed on its final publication.

Authors should always acknowledge their sources and provide relevant citation details for all publications that have influenced their work. They will also declare any conflict(s) of interest.

Authors are asked to provide the raw data connected with a paper for the peer-review and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication in order to provide access to such data.

The offer to publish with the Journal shall be formalized through a disclaimer which shall be sent to the Author(s).

Authors who accept the offer to publish with the Journal are understood to have accepted the ethics code.

Authors must respect all post-review deadlines. If an Author cannot respect the deadline, he/she will have to contact the Editorial Office as soon as possible to determine whether a longer time period may be granted to him/her.

Authors must promptly inform the Editorial Office of any obvious error(s) in his or her published paper and cooperate earnestly with the Editor-in-Chief to either correct or retract the paper. If any substantial mistakes occur after the publication, the Journal will immediately inform the Readers through a correction message (lit. Errata Corrige) on its website as well as in the manuscript portfolio.

Part Four

Reviewers

Duties and Responsibilities

Reviewers are recognized academic experts in their field of research: they are selected exclusively on the basis of their academic background by either the Editor-in-Chief or one of the Reviewers’ Committee Coordinators, at any time throughout the year.

Exceptionally, members of the Advisory Board of the Journal or other international academic experts may be involved in the peer-review process if the Editor-in-Chief establishes that an additional ad-hoc Reviewer is required.

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts objectively and professionally. They shall avoid personal biases in their comments and final judgment; they express their views clearly with supporting arguments, ultimately providing substantiated and fair reviews.

Reviewers carry out their work with integrity and transparency: to this end, they abstain from reviewing a manuscript if they were involved, under any circumstance, in its drafting.

Reviewers abide by the principle of confidentiality regarding the content of the manuscripts submitted by Authors. They do not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Reviewers’ Committee Coordinators, the Editor-in-Chief and the Vice Editor(s)-in-Chief.

Reviewers assist the Editorial Board in the detection of plagiarism and ensure that Authors have acknowledged all bibliographical sources used in the research. All suspect cases of similarity of a manuscript to, as well as its overlap with, an existing publication the Reviewer has personal knowledge of must be immediately brought to the Editor-in-Chief’s notice.

The role of the Reviewer is open-ended and unremunerated; it expires with death, resignation, or is implicitly forfeited due to a lack of collaboration with the Reviewers’ Committee for one full year.

Any complaint relating to the peer-review process is directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

In accordance with the Journal’s blind evaluation policy, the Reviewers’ list is not made public, and may be disclosed to institutional bodies for accreditation purposes only.

Each year the Editor-in-Chief appoints two Reviewers, who will manage and coordinate the Reviewers’ Committee. The role of Reviewers’ Coordinator can be renewed up to five times.

Part Five

Artificial Intelligence

Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies in the writing process should only be used to improve readability and language of the manuscript and not to replace key authoring tasks such as producing legal insights and drawing scientific conclusions.

Authors shall disclose in their manuscript the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies and a statement will appear in the published work. Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies must not be used on previously published material. 

Authors shall not list generative AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author.

The Journal does not allow the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools to create or alter images in submitted manuscripts, except if the use of generative AI or AI-assisted tools is part of the research design or research methods (such as in AI-assisted imaging approaches to generate or interpret the underlying research data). If this is done, such use must be described in a reproducible manner in the methods section.

The Journal will adopt detection tools which flag AI-generated content in the manuscript during the editorial process.

Authors are ultimately responsible and accountable for the contents of the submitted manuscript.

Final Clause

Unless otherwise stated in this Code, the COPE “Core Practices” (updates) and Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing shall apply in terms of general principles.

Data Policy

When relevant, authors are encouraged to follow Open Science and FAIR principles by publishing the research data associated to their articles in trusted data repositories, according to the international best practices and data management guidelines.

Detailed information is reported in the AlmaDL Journals Data Policy.

Authors who are affiliated to the University of Bologna can publish their data in AMSActa, the institutional research data repository.

Publisher

Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Alma Diamond – open scholarly communication

Via Zamboni 33,
40126 - Bologna (Italy)

Ownership

Department of Legal Studies
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

via Zamboni 27
40126 - Bologna (Italy)

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