Notes for Contributors
Social & Legal Studies was founded in 1992 to develop progressive, interdisciplinary and critical approaches towards socio-legal study. At the heart of the journal has been a commitment towards feminist, post-colonialist, and socialist economic perspectives of law. These remain core animating principles. We aim to create an intellectual space where diverse traditions and critical approaches within legal study meet. We particularly welcome work in new field of socio-legal study, as well as non-Western scholarship. The lead editor of the journal is Professor Linda Mulcahy. If you would like to submit a manuscript please do so by emailing her at l.mulcahy@bbk.ac.uk
Submission Manuscript Guidelines:
1. Papers should preferably be written in English, although foreign language papers will be considered. Papers should not have been published already, nor be currently under consideration elsewhere. All papers are refereed.
2. Each paper should come with the following information on a separate sheet:
(a) title of paper, date and word count;
(b) author's full name, affiliation, institutional and email address, telephone and fax numbers;
(c) an abstract of 150 to 200 words;
(d) a list of 5 to 8 key words.
3. Articles must be typed in double spacing throughout on one side of A4 or American Quarto paper with generous margins on all sides. All pages should be numbered. The maximum length should be 8000 words, including notes and references.
4. The typescript should be carefully checked for errors before it is submitted for publication. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of quotations, for supplying complete and correct references, and for obtaining permission where needed to cite another author's material.
5. Essential notes should be indicated by superscript numbers in the text, and presented at the end of the text before the references. Notes and references should be in double-spacing. Articles should have a maximum of ten notes. The first, unnumbered, note should include any acknowledgements and thanks.
6. Lengthy quotations (of more than 40 words) should be displayed, indented; shorter quotes should be retained within the body of the text, within quotation marks.
7. Tables should be presented on separate sheets of paper at the end of the article, and should carry short, descriptive titles. Figures should be of reproducible standard, clearly numbered, and accompanied by explanatory numbered captions typed on a separate sheet. The position of both tables and figures within the text should be clearly indicated.
8. Referencing. Use the Harvard-style system: surname and date cited in the text; with an alphabetically ordered end list, headed References, and typed double-spaced for ease of editing. Use the following style:
(a) Beatty, David M. (1990) Talking Heads and the Supremes: The Canadian Production of Constitutional Review. Toronto: Carswell.
(b) Bowles, Samuel and Herbert Gintis (1990) 'Democratic Demands and Radical Rights', Socialist Review 20: 57-72.
(c) Sevenhuijsen, Selma L. (1991) 'Justice, Moral Reasoning and the Politics of Child Custody', pp. 88-103 in E. Meehan and S. L. Sevenhuijsen (eds), Equality Principles and Gender Politics. London: Sage.
When citing a new edition of a previously published work, include both dates, e.g. Durkheim (1912/1976), in text and references.
9. Cases cited. Where appropriate, please supply a separate double-spaced list of cases cited.
10. Our spelling style is based on the Oxford English Dictionary and the guidelines laid down in Hart's Rules for Compositors (Oxford). We also endorse the guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association and the British Sociological Association for non-sexist and non-racist language.
11. Authors will be asked to provide a diskette containing the final version only of their paper following acceptance for publication. The author is responsible for ensuring that the final hard copy and diskette versions of the manuscript are identical.
12. Authors are sent proofs for checking and correction, and will receive controlled access to a pdf of their article plus one copy of the journal after publication.
Empirical Data
Social & Legal Studies positively welcomes articles which report and reflect on the findings of empirical research undertaken by authors. However, we recommend that the following issues are addressed in articles prior to submission:
--The methodology used and reasons for choosing this particular approach;
--The methods adopted including choice of sample;
--How participants were selected and why;
--Whether any ethical issues arose in the course of data collection and how these were addressed;
--A brief description of how data was analysed.
Getting Maximum Readership and Exposure for Your Article
To make sure that your article gets the maximum readership and exposure, we allow Google and other search engines to index its full-text, we actively encourage people to sign up for contents alerting, we enable free citation-linking and we offer free access periods. In preparing your article for publication, there are things you can do to help maximise its readership and give it the maximum impact in the communities you want it to reach. These fall under the heading of 'discoverability'.
'Discoverability': Making Sure Your Article is Easy to Find
The vast majority of readers find articles online by searching rather than browsing. Most searching is done using clusters of keywords, or key phrases (e.g. 'youth justice', rather than simply 'youth'). Including key phrases which people searching are likely to use should make your article more discoverable.
To ensure that your article comes up when search engine users look for it, you should:
--Try to make the title of the article as clear as possible in describing its content;
--Ensure that the abstract spells out clearly what the article covers and mentions any terms that people searching for such an article might be likely to use;
--Make sure that you include appropriate key phrases or key words.
There are no exact rules on the right numbers of keywords or phrases, but up to 5 key phrases or 6-8 key words is probably about right. It is worth including at least one key word or phrase which describes the broad discipline within which the article sits, e.g. sociology, management studies, materials science.
Important words or phrases should appear in the title and be repeated in the abstract and key words/phrases, but it is good to have a reasonable spread of terms as well as making sure the major ones are emphasized. If you are working in a discipline where there is a recognised standard vocabulary (or 'taxonomy'), you should ensure that the term you use fit with that vocabulary. In the case of life science and medical topics, we recommend the use of the National Library of Medicine's 'MeSH' terms, used for indexing articles on MEDLINE/PubMed, which provides a consistent way to retrieve information that might use different terminology for the same concepts. More information can be found at http:/www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/meshhome.html
Users are likely to make their decision to read your article based on the title and maybe the abstract - make sure these give a clear picture of its content.
A good test is to type some of the key words or phrases you are intending to use into a search engine such as Google, to see if what comes out at the top of the listing of results is what you expect.
Manuscript Submission
SLS is hosted on ScholarOne™ Manuscripts, a web based online submission and peer review system - SAGE track. Please read the Manuscript Submission guidelines below, and then simply visit http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/SLS to login and submit your article online.
IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is possible that you will have had an account created.
All papers must be submitted via the online system. If you would like to discuss your paper prior to submission, please refer to the contact details below:
Carl Stychin (c.f.stychin@reading.ac.uk).
Book reviews should be submitted electronically to: Sharon Cowan (s.cowan@ed.ac.uk).
ANNOUNCEMENT
Social & Legal Studies invites proposals for its Dialogue and Debate section, and applications for its Workshop Funding Scheme.
Dialogue and Debate section
In 1998, Social & Legal Studies introduced an occasional Dialogue and Debate section as a feature of the journal. The aim of the section is to encourage focussed discussion and engagement on important critical and socio-legal topics in a briefer and more flexible format than the normal 8000 word essay. Possible formats for the Dialogue and Debate section include: direct dialogue through correspondence, shorter discussions around specific themes, extended book reviews and review articles with an author's response where appropriate, rejoinders to published papers and 'country reports' on the state of critical and socio-legal studies. The section might include a longer paper with a series of short responses, individual notes of up to 2000 words, or a grouped set of shorter thematized papers. All contributions would be subject to editorial review.
If you have any suggestions which you think might fit within this format, or would like more details, then please contact Emilios Christodoulidis (E.Christodoulidis@law.gla.ac.uk).
Social & Legal Studies Workshops
Social & Legal Studies is happy to provide up to £1000 for the support of academic workshops. The workshop should come within the journal's remit of developing progressive, interdisciplinary and critical approaches to socio-legal study. We particularly welcome applications for workshops which cross disciplinary and national boundaries, which feature participants from non-western countries, and which include academics at an early stage of their career. It is expected that workshops will be open to the wider academic community, and that if a registration fee is charged this will reflect solely the direct costs of organizing and holding the event.
As part of our policy of developing thematically-based special issues, we hope to publish papers from our funded workshops. Although we cannot guarantee publication, Social & Legal Studies seeks 'first right of refusal' on papers emanating from those workshops it funds. Organizers should therefore indicate what papers they expect the workshop to generate, and whether they would like the papers to be considered for a special issue or to be treated by the journal as individual articles.
Applications may be made at any time, and will be considered by the Editorial Board. There is no form for applications. A letter of application should set out the workshop details, speakers and provisional paper titles, and a budget should be sent to the journal's editorial office, preferably by email. Journal funding can be used to cover the cost of room bookings, advertising, catering, travel/accommodation of speakers, and photocopying of materials. Receipts for expenditures will be required and no overheads will be paid. In all advertising and promotional material, the financial support of the journal should be acknowledged.
English Language Editing Services: Please click here for information on professional English language editing services recommended by SAGE.
