Submissions
Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies Submission Guidelines
Thank you for your interest in contributing to the Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies Blog. Please read these guidelines before submitting your completed posts to us.
Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies aims to promote dialogue between socio-legal scholars who are undertaking or interested in empirical studies of law and legal phenomena. The editorial team welcome original contributions which provide high quality analysis of recent socio-legal research, methodological issues, ethical issues, and publications from around the globe. We welcome submissions from students, early career researchers, policy-makers, senior academics, lawyers and members of civil society organisations provided that the content is of a high quality and complies with the submission guidance below.
Socio-Legal Frontiers seeks contributions to three distinct sections:
- Methodological Musings is dedicated to discussion of methodologies and methods used in the production of empirical studies of law and legal phenomena. Contributions should take the form of a reflection on work already undertaken or at the design stage. This might include posts on the value of a particular approach to the collection of data, problems encountered in the design or implementation of a methodology, ethical dilemmas, or unanticipated problems that occurred in the field.
- Borderlands focuses on new directions in socio-legal studies. These might include discussion of new interdisciplinary interfaces and previously unexplored subjects, resources or archives, new research programmes or projects, networks and initiatives. It will also include key findings from recently completed empirical research projects that could reference longer publications.
- A Good Read features reviews of recent, theoretically informed empirical socio-legal publications. Whilst this section is mainly dedicated to book reviews, reviews of recent socio-legal articles are also welcomed. As methods are a core focus of the blog, we encourage authors to reflect upon methodology in the texts under review.
Guidelines for contributions
- Posts must be between 500-700 words in length. Posts which are longer than 700 words will not be considered for publication.
- Posts should not contain footnotes or endnotes.
- Posts must include hyperlinks to relevant legal sources and background information. Hyperlinks must link only to academic or respected news sources.
- Posts should be clear, concise, and avoid excessive jargon.
- Submissions must be fully proofread and conform to good legal academic style.
- Posts should include page number references for any quotes given.
- Posts should have informative titles from which a reader can tell what the post is about. For A Good Read submissions, please provide an original title for posts.
- Authors will be required to submit a headshot and brief bio (maximum 50 words) on acceptance of their submission.
- We aim to make the blog accessible to a global audience. As a result, posts should provide relevant background information to readers from outside your country.
- Blog posts are published in English.
- Posts should reflect original, unpublished work.
- Cross-posting or publication on other platforms is permitted. Please follow our cross-posting guidelines for details on how to do this below.
How to submit
- Please submit your post via our online submission form.
- Please use 12 pt Times New Roman font, single spaced, with 1-inch margins.
- Please use British English spellings and Oxford commas.
- Where using the term ‘Socio-Legal Studies’ in the body of your submission, please capitalise each word.
- The editors will not approve posts in advance of seeing the text. Please do not send abstracts, as we will not be able to tell from an abstract whether your post complies with the Blog’s submission guidelines. If you are unsure whether a topic is suitable for the blog, please email us on the address below. An indication that a topic may be suitable does not amount to advance acceptance of the post.
- We endeavour to respond quickly to submissions and you can anticipate an initial email confirming receipt upon your submission. A member of the Editorial Board will then be in touch with you about your submission within three weeks.
- If the Editors consider that your post has potential to be published, but is not currently of the required standard, then we will send back your work with editorial suggestions in tracked changes. This does not amount to acceptance of the post, and the Editorial Board may decide, upon seeing revisions, that the submission is not suitable for publication on the Frontiers of Socio-Legal Studies Blog.
- If the post is accepted for publication, there may be a delay between acceptance and publication in the interests of us managing copyflow. We aim to minimise this where a post covers a very recent or urgent issue.
- If you encounter any technical difficulties submitting, please email the Editorial team: blog@csls.ox.ac.uk. Please include the title of your post, the section of the blog you are submitting to, and your name in the subject line of the email.
Contributors Agreement
By submitting a post to the blog, the Contributor guarantees that the post is a product of their work and has not been previously published elsewhere.