Information For Authors

About the Journal

The European Journal of Legal Education (EJLE) is an international, peer-reviewed open access journal publishing high-quality, original research. It is the journal of the European Law Faculties Association.

Please note that this journal only publishes manuscripts in English.

Aims and Scope

We are interested in articles about any aspect of legal education which will be of interest to legal academics teaching in law faculties anywhere in Europe. This will include articles concerned with:

  • learning theory and pedagogy;
  • the use of technology in legal education;
  • classroom and clinical approaches;
  • academic, vocational and professional legal education;
  • the issues surrounding the regulation and political influences on law faculties;
  • research into legal education.

However, we do not assume we have identified an exhaustive list of topics. Articles presenting research into legal education elsewhere in the world will be of interest, especially if presented so that their relevance to a European audience is made clear.

Peer Review

The European Journal of Legal Education is committed to peer-review integrity and upholding the highest standards of review. Once your paper has been assessed for suitability by the editor, it will then be double blind peer reviewed by independent, anonymous expert referees.

Preparing Your Paper

Structure

Your paper should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion; acknowledgments; declaration of interest statement; references; appendices (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figures; figure captions (as a list).

Word Limits

Papers should typically be up to 10,000 words, inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, footnotes. Please include a word count for your paper.

Style Guidelines

Please refer to these quick style guidelines when preparing your paper, rather than any published articles or a sample copy.

Please use single quotation marks, except where ‘a quotation is “within” a quotation’. Please note that long quotations should be indented without quotation marks.

Headings. Contributors should strive to keep to two levels of heading within an article wherever possible. A third is acceptable in extremis. In any case a numbering or typographical system should be adopted which makes it clear on the typescript which heading belongs to which level.

Italics. Use italics for Latin terms, and book, journal and film titles.

Abbreviations and initials. Full stops should be omitted in abbreviations, initials, and within case names: eg, ie, Co, Ltd, R v Massey. ie and eg should not be used in the text but are acceptable in notes.

Our preferred referencing style is for references to be placed in footnotes using the facility provided by MS Word and indicated by superscript Arabic numerals placed in the text. References should follow the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). However, we have a format-free policy and will accept referencing in any style provided the format of an article and the footnoting etc. is consistent and coherent within the article itself, it will be considered suitable for publishing.

Miscellaneous

Publishing for the web is slightly different from publishing on paper and gaps between words or sentences look quite noticeable online. Therefore only one space (rather than the conventional two spaces as with a Word document) is required between the end of one sentence and the start of another.

Single rather than double quotation marks should be used.

Spelling should comply with British, not American forms, e.g. -ise, not ize, as in nationalise.

Numbers one to twelve and per cent to be spelt out.

The text is single-spaced; uses a 12-point font; employs italics, rather than underlining (except with URL addresses); and all illustrations, figures, and tables are placed within the text at the appropriate points, rather than at the end.

Where available, URLs for the references should be provided, together with the date of most recent access.

Formatting

Papers should be submitted in Word format. Figures should be saved separately from the text.

Checklist: What to Include

  1. Author details.All authors of a manuscript should include their full name and affiliation on the cover page of the manuscript. Where available, please also include ORCiDs and social media handles (Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn). One author will need to be identified as the corresponding author, with their email address normally displayed in the article PDF and the online article. Authors’ affiliations are the affiliations where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer-review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after your paper is accepted. 
  2. Should contain an unstructured abstract of 200 words.
  3. Between 3 and 5 keywords.
  4. Funding details.Please supply all details required by your funding and grant-awarding bodies as follows:
    For single agency grants
    This work was supported by the [Funding Agency] under Grant [number xxxx].
    For multiple agency grants
    This work was supported by the [Funding Agency #1] under Grant [number xxxx]; [Funding Agency #2] under Grant [number xxxx]; and [Funding Agency #3] under Grant [number xxxx].
  5. Disclosure statement.This is to acknowledge any financial interest or benefit that has arisen from the direct applications of your research.
  6. Figures should be high quality (1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour, at the correct size). Figures should be supplied in one of our preferred file formats: EPS, SVG, PS, PNG, JPEG, GIF, or Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX).
  7. Tables should present new information rather than duplicating what is in the text. Readers should be able to interpret the table without reference to the text. Please supply editable files.
  8. If you are submitting your manuscript as a Word document, please ensure that equations are editable.
  9. Please use SI units (non-italicised).

Using Third-Party Material in your Paper

You must obtain the necessary permission to reuse third-party material in your article. The use of short extracts of text and some other types of material is usually permitted, on a limited basis, for the purposes of criticism and review without securing formal permission. If you wish to include any material in your paper for which you do not hold copyright, and which is not covered by this informal agreement, you will need to obtain written permission from the copyright owner prior to submission.

Submitting Your Paper

All papers should be submitted using the EJLE website: https://www.ejle.eu

The author’s original manuscript should be fully anonymised.

This journal uses Open Journal Systems (OJS) software to manage the peer-review process. If you haven't submitted a paper to this journal before, you will need to create an account in OJS. Please read the guidelines above and then submit your paper in EJLE Author Centre, where you will find user guides and a helpdesk.

Please note that the EJLE uses originality-checking software to screen papers for unoriginal material. By submitting your paper to the EJLE you are agreeing to originality checks during the peer-review and production processes.

On acceptance, we recommend that you keep a copy of your Accepted Manuscript.

Publication Charges

There are no submission fees, publication fees or page charges for this journal.

How to submit your manuscript for anonymous peer review

To ensure that article referees or peer reviewers do not know your identity (as author[s] of the manuscript being reviewed), you will need to make sure that you remove any information in your manuscript (including footnotes and acknowledgements) that could identify you, and disguise all references to personally identifiable information such as the research institution where your work was carried out.

  1. If you are submitting your manuscript via an online submission system, or as an email attachment, you should send two separate files, one with the author(s) details, and one without.
  2. In text, you can replace any information that would identify the author(s) by substituting words such as: [name deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process].
  3. Do not mention a grant awarded to a named person. (This information can be added later.)
  4. Do not add any running headers or footers that would identify authors.
  5. Refer to your own references in the third person. For example, write ‘Smith and Black (2007) have demonstrated’, not ‘We have previously demonstrated (Smith & Black, 2007)’.
  6. Check that all identifiers have been removed from electronic files, for example, documents prepared using Microsoft™ Word®. Personal or hidden information is stored in File Properties. These properties include Author, Manager, Company, and Last Saved By. Hidden information includes hidden text, revised text, comments, or field codes, and these can remain in a document even though you can’t see them. If you entered your name or email address when you registered your software, this will be stored as part of the document. Information contained in custom fields that you add to the document, such as an ‘author’ or ‘owner’ field, is not automatically removed. You must edit or remove the custom field to remove that information. On the Tools menu, click Options, and then click the Security tab. Select the Remove personal information from File properties on Save check box.
  7. When you submit the final draft of the manuscript for publication, you will need to put back any references to yourself, your institution, grants awarded, etc.).
  8. Avoid or minimize self-citation. If it is necessary to cite your own work, delete the names of authors and other identifying information and place substitute words in brackets, such as: [name deleted to maintain the integrity of the review process]. In the reference list, you should delete the citation and add it before submitting your final draft.