Submissions

Author Guidelines

1. Submission Process

Authors wishing to submit their manuscripts to the University of Bologna Law Review, they are required to:

• read the Editorial Policies
• read the Editorial Sections
• read the Ethics Code
• read the Copyright Notice (see below)
• comply with the Submission Requirements
• submit your anonymized manuscript via email to bolognalawreview@unibo.it along with the required type (see §2.1) and metadata (see §2.3) or register and proceed with the Online Submission 

The Journal accepts submissions (via e-mail/OJS) only during Call for Papers periods.

During the Call for Papers, the Journal does not accept simultaneous submissions along with other journals. 

The Journal cannot accept submissions from undergraduate students (i.e. "student at a university or college who is studying for his or her first degree" Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers ) as sole authors.

2. Submission Requirements  

§ 2.1. Types

The University of Bologna Law Review accepts for publication original manuscripts not previously published elsewhere except as specifically permitted under the Secondary publications and Working Papers Policy (§2.5). Deposited preprints are not considered publications under this policy.

The submission must refer to the following types of manuscripts:

- Articles & Essays

- Notes

- Conference Papers

§ 2.2. Format

The University of Bologna Law Review requests that authors comply with the following standards for format and length for submissions:

• The manuscript must be written in British English (American English may be considered in exceptional cases).
• The manuscript must be in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or Open Document Text document file format. Other formats (e.g., PDF) are not accepted.
• The manuscript must be anonymized (for support with anonymization, see the process at the bottom of the page).
• The manuscript must be of the following length (article metadata and footnotes excluded):
  • Articles & Essays (Articles: min. 8,000–max. 20,000 words / Essays: min. 5,000–max. 12,000 words)
  • Notes (min. 3,000–max. 8,000 words)
  • Conference Papers (min. 4,000–max. 10,000 words)

The Journal accepts footnotes only. Endnotes are not accepted. References must be inserted into footnotes: preferably, The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation (21st ed.) shall be applied as the citation standard.

The Journal may consider manuscripts exceeding the 20,000 word limit in exceptional cases of outstanding scholarly contribution.

Complete dissertations, LL.M., or PhD theses cannot be considered for publication. Such works must be substantially adapted into self-contained articles before submission.

§ 2.3. Metadata

The manuscript must also contain:

• Title
• Subtitle (optional)
• Keywords (maximum 5)
• A short abstract of maximum 500 words in length
• JEL Codes (maximum 3) for manuscripts where an Economic perspective related to Legal Studies is being emphasized (optional)

In a separate attached file (Disclaimer): 

• Author's name and surname (for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• Current position and affiliation (for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• E-mail address (the corresponding author's email address, in case of co-authorship);
• ORCID iD (if available; for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• Preferred Editorial Section specifying the intended section (Articles/Essays/Notes/Conference Papers) for the submission;
• Funding Disclosure Statement concerning any supporting agencies, source of research funding or other institutional support have facilitated the research provided with the name of the funding organisation/s and the grant number; if none, state “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors";
• Competing Interest (CI) Statement (for each author, in case of co-authorship); if none, state "The authors declare no competing interests";
• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Use Disclosure Statement concerning any use of generative AI tools or AI-assisted technologies in the research, writing, editing, or preparation of the manuscript, specifying the tools used and their application; if none, state "The authors declare no use of artificial intelligence tools in the preparation of this manuscript";
• Cover letter (optional);

§ 2.4. Datasets, Tables, Figures, and Images

Authors should provide datasets with every empirical submission (when social research methods are applied), if not already included in the manuscript text. Authors must also provide proper attribution and copyright information for any tables, graphs, figures, or images included in their submission. All supplementary materials may be submitted via email or through the OJS platform together with the manuscript and disclaimer, or upon request by the Editorial Office during the Preliminary Evaluation Step. Authors are responsible for obtaining necessary permissions for copyrighted materials and must provide documentation of such permissions when required.

§ 2.5. Secondary publications and Working Papers Policy 

The Journal prioritizes original scholarship. For manuscripts previously published elsewhere in other languages, in substantially different forms, or as working papers with ISBN, authors must contact the Editorial Office prior to submission. Each case will be evaluated individually for compliance with COPE and ICMJE secondary publication guidelines in order to be admitted to  submission.

Submissions which do not comply with the Submission Requirements (2.2, 2.3 and 2.5) will be promptly rejected by the Journal (Desk rejection) and they may be re-submitted only during the Call for Papers terms. In case of Desk rejection, the Editorial Office will support Authors to comply with Submission Requirements for re-submission. 

Due to the high volume of submissions received for each Call for Papers, manuscripts that are declined during the Preliminary Editorial Assessment cannot be resubmitted to the same Call for Papers, even in updated/modified form.

Data Anonymization

To ensure the integrity of anonymous peer-review, every effort should be made to prevent the identities of the authors and reviewers from being known to each other. This involves the authors, editors, and reviewers (who upload documents as part of their review) checking to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:

• The authors of the document have deleted their names from the metadata (e.g. frontpage).
• The authors of the document have removed personal information from the file properties by taking the following steps:
  • Microsoft Word for Windows:
    • Go to File
    • Select Info
    • Click on Check for Issues
    • Click on Inspect Document
    • In the Document Inspector dialog box, select the check boxes to choose the type of hidden content that you want inspected.
    • Click Remove All
    • Click Close
    • Save the document
  • Microsoft Word for MacOS:
    • Go to Tools
    • Click Protect Document
    • Select Remove personal information for this file on save
    • Click OK and save the file
  • PDF:
    • Go to File
    • Select Properties
    • Remove any name in the author field
    • Click OK
    • Save the document