Drafting Instructions

JOURNAL OF LEGAL STUDIES

AUTHOR'S GUIDE

Papers have to be written in English. Please write your text in Good English (American or British usage is accepted but not a mixture of these).

To ensure suitability for an international audience, please pay attention to the following:

- Keep in mind that you write for a general audience, make it in straightforward and professional style;

- Try to avoid long or complex sentence structures.

- Briefly explain all technical terms that may be unfamiliar to some readers.

- Explain all acronyms at first use.

- Explain all local references (e.g. not everyone is familiar with city names in a country).

  1. EDITORIAL PROCEDURE

The journal follows a double – blind review procedure.

  1. PERMISSION

The Journal of Legal Studies publishes only original and high quality papers. Submission of a paper implies that the work described has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis or as an electronic preprint), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere and that its publication is approved by all authors. The exceptions refer to the publication in the form of an abstract in International Conferences or as part of a PhD thesis.

If accepted the paper must be approved by publication by all coauthors, as well as the authorities responsible for funding part or the entire research. Furthermore, submission implies that the authors have already obtained all compulsory permissions for the inclusion of copyrighted materials. The publisher will not be held legally responsible should there be any claims for compensation.

Authors are kindly asked to fill a Copyright Agreement and sign, scan and upload on the journals’ website.

An author can publish a maximum of 2 papers/year in the Journal of Legal Studies.

The Journal of legal Studies publishes two issues each year.

To verify originality, your article may be checked by originality detection software.

The Scientific Board, Editorial Board and reviewers are not responsible for the contents of the papers published in the journal, which is the sole responsibility of the authors. However, the Journal’s obligation is to assist the scientific community in all concerning publishing ethics, especially in case of plagiarism. If proven, allegations of fraud in all its forms - duplicate submission, non – original research, publication without approval of all coauthors – will be sanctioned accordingly

  1. PAPER REQUIREMENTS

The paper will not exceed 20 pages including the references and annexes.

The paper will be uploaded on the journals’ website.

  1. STRUCTURE OF THE PAPER

Title

The title must be concise, clear and informative and adequate to the content of the paper. Titles are often used in information – retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

Abstract

A concise and factual abstract, conceived as an objective representation of the paper, is required. The abstract should be a single paragraph consisting of 150 to 250 words.The abstract should briefly state:  the broad context of the research question; the purpose of the research; methods, data and data sources; main findings and results substantiated in the paper;  major conclusions and, in some cases, policy implications. The abstract is conceived in a such a manner to be able to stand alone, as separately presented from the article. For this reason, References should be avoided, but if essential, then cite the author(s) and year(s). Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 5 keywords. These keywords must be appropriate as they will be used for indexing purposes.

JEL CODES

An appropriate number of JEL codes should be provided. This classification system is prepared and published by the Journal of Economic Literature, see: http://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide.

Introduction

State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results. Only the relevance of the research work has to be described.

Literature review/Theoretical background

This section should extend, but not repeat the background of the paper already dealt with in the Introduction section and lay down the foundation for further work. If it is appropriate to the paper's content and topic, section will be included, representing a practical development from a theoretical basis.

Methodology and Case study or Legislation data

This section is a description of the methods used in the research in a manner allowing the verification of the research. Provide sufficient details to allow the work to be reproduced. Data, statistical, legislation and jurisprudence sources have to be mentioned in this section.

Empirical results and comments regarding the case study and/or legislation

The research results have to be clearly stated and are not derived on the basis of a speculation of speculations or assumptions. The conclusions are the result of a logical approach of the information presented in the paper. You can discuss your results by comparing them with other previous studies.

Discussion

This should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. A combined Results and Discussion section is often appropriate. Avoid extensive citation and discussion of published literature.

Conclusions and further directions of research

The main conclusion of the study may be presented in a Short conclusion section, which may stand alone. The conclusions explain the personal contributions of the authors to knowledge. Possible further directions of research may be detailed.

References

The list of references should only include works that are cited in the text and that have     been published or accepted for publication (in press). Personal communications and unpublished works should only be mentioned in the text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference list.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements of people, grants, funds, etc. should be placed in a separate section before the reference list. The names of funding organisations should be written in full.

Appendices

If it is necessary, the paper may contain appendices placed at the end of the document.

  1. TEXT FORMATING

Manuscripts should be submitted only to the Editorial Board by uploading it on the journals’ website in an electronic format (DOC. or DOCX.) and should not provide personal information regarding the authors (blind version).

Also, it is neccessary to upload on journals’website a cover letter including:

- title of the paper;

- authors’ names and surnames;

- affiliation;

- scientific title (ex. Professor);

- scientific degree (ex. PhD. or Ph.D. Student);

- contact details (street, no., town, country, e-mail address);

- indicating the corresponding author with an asterisk (*).

The cover letter must also include:

- the main added value of the paper.

- the reason behind tackling the reserch theme.

- the gains for the economic community.

- the main contribution of the paper.

A confirmation from the editorial board will be provided in the next 48 working hours after submission. In case the confirmation is not received by the corresponding author please resubmit the manuscript.

The template of the paper can be downloaded here.

Headings

Please use decimal system of headings with no more than 3 levels.

Abreviations

Abreviations should be defined in the first section and used consistently thereafter.

Footnotes

Footones can be used only to give additional information, they should not consist of a reference citation. They are numbered consecutively.

Citations

Citations in the text should follow the referencing style used by the American Psychological Association. You are referred to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition, ISBN 978-1-4338-0561-5, copies of which may be ordered from http://books.apa.org/books.cfm?id=4200067 or APA Order Dept., P.O.B. 2710, Hyattsville, MD 20784, USA or APA, 3 Henrietta Street, London, WC3E 8LU, UK.

Some examples:

- Consumer research spans many disciplines (Thomson, 2001).

- Consumer research spans many disciplines (Ferguson, 2012, pp. 64–67).

- This result was verified and extended by Smith (2010).

- In this study, we used Purring’s (2012) Charisma and Tenacity Survey (CATS) rather than Barks and Howls’s (2013) Directions of Generosity survey.

- These effects were extensively studied (Martin, 1999; Klein et al, 2001; Smith&Kohl, 2008).

- These effects were extensively studied (Minor, 2001; see also Adams, 2000; Sartre, 2007).

Tables

All tables are to be numbered using Arabic numerals. Tables should always be cited in consecutive numerical order. For each table, please supply a title explaining the components of the table, in italics and bold. Identify any previously published material by giving the original source in a form of a reference beneath the table body. If there are notes concerning the tables, these should be inserted immediately after the table.

Figures

Figures should be high resolution with descriptive headings. Their titles should be in italics and centered above the figures. All figures are to be numbered using Arabic numerals. Figures should always be cited in text in consecutive numerical order. Figure parts should be noted by lowercase letters (a, b, c etc.). If an appendix appears in you article and it contains one or more figures continue the consecutive numbering of the main text.

Figures and tables must be placed inside the text. Under the tables, drawings, figures etc., their source should be indicated; if they should present results of the authors’ work, this will be indicated as “self research” or “self processing” We prefer self designed tables, diagrams and figures instead of scanned pieces scanned from other works.

References list

References list entries should be alphabetized by the last names of the first author of each work. More than one reference from the same author(s) in the same year must be identified by the letters 'a', 'b', 'c', etc., placed after the year of publication.

- Journal article

Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34, 1047–1056.

Ideally, the name of all authors should be provided but the usage of "et al" in long author list is also accepted.

- Conference proceedings

- Published regularly conference proceedings

Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. Proceedings of National Academy 25, 1205-1220.

- Published in form of book

Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. In Thiery, P. & Smooth, J. Modern societies: Vol 23 (pp.456- 467). New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

- Books

Smith, P.(2011). Leadership in small communities. Berlin: Springer Verlag.

Dweck, C. S. (2007). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.

- Chapter in books

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of chapter. In B. B. Editor (Ed.), Title of book (pp. xxx–xxx). Location: Publisher

Chow, T. W., & Cummings, J. L. (2000). The amygdala and Alzheimer’s disease. In J. Peton (Ed.), The amygdala: A functional analysis (pp. 656–680). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press

- Online documents

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book Retrieved from http://xxxxx Accessed day/month/year

Author, A. (date). Title of document [Format description]. Retrieved from http://URL Accessed day/month/year

Smith, P. Riley, J.(2009) Politics of small communities, IOP Publishing web, Retrived from http://modernsocieties.org/article/news/112/3/8/ Accessed 30 May 2013

Appendices

If there is more than one appendix, they should be identified as A, B, etc. In a subsequent appendix similarly for tables and figures: Table A.1; Fig. A.1, etc.

Papers that don't comply to this guide will not be consider for publication.