Submissions

Author Guidelines

1. Manuscript Submission Process

Authors are willing to publish your submissions in the University of Bologna Law Review, they are required to:

• read the Editorial Policies
• read the Ethics Code
• read the Copyright Notice (see below)
• comply with the Publication Rules (see §2.2, below)
• 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) during Call for Papers, only.

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 Rules 

§ 2.1. Types

The University of Bologna Law Review accepts for publication original and previously unpublished manuscripts, only.

The submission must refer to the following types of manuscripts:

- Articles and Essays (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 strong methodology and in-depth (inter)disciplinary research)

- Notes (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 (research manuscripts or reports presented at academic panels)

§ 2.2. Format

The University of Bologna Law Review requests that Authors comply with the following standards of format and length of the submission:

• The manuscript must be written in correct British English language (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 format (e.g. PDF) are not accepted.
• The manuscript must be anonymized (for support in anonymization, see the process on the bottom of the page)
• The manuscript must be in length (articles metadata, references and footnotes, excluded):  
 
• Articles and Essays (min. 6,000- max. 25,000 words)
• Notes (min. 2,000 - max. 6,000 words)
• Conference Papers (min.2,000 - max.10,000 words)

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

The Journal may consider manuscripts exceeding the length of 25,000 words in case of outstanding pieces of scholarship.

The Journal can not consider complete dissertation, LL.M. or PhD thesis for the publication; it shall be adapted as self-standing article before the 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 institutional role / professional activity (for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• An e-mail address (the corresponding author's email address, in case of co-authorship);
• Current institutional/professional affiliations (for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• A 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 the research was unfunded, include this sentence as the Funding Disclosure Statement: “This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors").
• A Competing Interest (CI) statement (for each author, in case of co-authorship);
• A cover letter (optional);

Finally, Authors should also provide datasets, with every empirical submissions (if social research methods are applied), if are not already included in the text of the manuscript. They may be preferably submitted via email or through OJS platform together with the manuscript and the disclaimer or upon request by the Editorial Office.  

Submissions which do not comply with the Publication rules (2.2 and 2.3) 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 in order to comply with the Publication Rules for the re-submission (specifying a 'Pending submission' in case of missing details. Pending submissions must be completed only during the Call for Papers terms). 

Manuscripts that have been submitted to a Call for Papers and declined during the Preliminary Evaluation step cannot be resubmitted in any modified form to the same Call for Papers.

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