United Kingdom Journals

Information for authors.

December 2012

General

Contibutions submitted to the WebJCLI in the Articles, Comments, Case Notes, Legal Education and Information Technology sections will be refereed before publication.

The Journal will be mounted on one of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne's servers: http://webjcli.ncl.ac.uk

The Editors

Editorial Committee:

General Editor

Philip Leith, Professor of Law, Queen's University Belfast <p.leith@qub.ac.uk>

Case Notes Editor

James Marson, Senior Lecturer in Law, Sheffield Hallam University <J.Marson@shu.ac.uk>

Legal Education Editor

Fiona Cownie, Professor of Law, University of Keele. <f.cownie@law.keele.ac.uk>

Information Technology Editor

Diane Rowland, Professor, University of Wales, Aberystwyth. <diane.rowland@aber.ac.uk>

Book Review Editor

Orkun Akseli, Senior Lecturer, Durham Law School < n.o.akseli@durham.ac.uk>

Committee Member

Brian Jack, Lecturer in Law, Queen's University Belfast <b.jack@qub.ac.uk>

Technical Director

Bruce Grant, Guest Member of Staff (Retd.) Newcastle Law School <bruce.grant@newcastle.ac.uk>

Editorial Board

Professor Michael Allen, Commisssioner (Retd.) Criminal Cases Review Commission.

Professor Rosa Greaves, School of Law, University of Glasgow.

The Hon Mr Justice David Hayton, Caribbean Court of Justice.

Her Honour Judge Christina Lyon.

Professor Colin Munro, Faculty of Law, University of Edinburgh.

Professor Anthony Ogus, Faculty of Law, The University of Manchester.

Contents

Form

1. Six sections
2. Length
3. Headings and sub-headings
4. Cross references
5. Footnotes
6. Summary

Method of citation

7. OSCOLA

Submission to the Editors

8. Editorial Committee
9. Identification of author
10. File formats
11. Word processing guidance
12. Acknowledgement
13. Amendment after submission
14. Copyright

___________________________________________________________

Form

1. The editors invite submissions in the following subject sections:

(a) Articles. Articles should normally be of between 4,000 to 8,000 words but longer articles will be considered. Articles in any field of legal scholarship will be welcomed provided they deal with some matter of current import.

(b) Case Notes. These should be of a maximum of 4,000 words providing critical comment on recent cases.

(c) Comments. This section will contain comments on current issues such as Green or White Papers and other government policy or consultation papers, Law Commission Consultations or Reports, Select Committee Reports, Reports of other inquiries or law reform bodies, etc. Comments should be of a maximum of 4,000 words.

(d) Legal Education. This section is aimed at disseminating information about new developments in legal education and encouraging debate. Comments may be brief or up to full article length which would be appropriate where the results of research on an educational innovation or project are being communicated.

(e) Information technology. This section is designed to disseminate information about new developments in information technology in so far as they relate to legal education, research or practice. Contributions may be brief or up to full article length.

(f) Book reviews. This section aims to publish book reviews within a few months of books being published thereby assisting the decision-making on new acquisitions for libraries or the adoption of books for courses. While books received for review will be sent out to individuals for review, reviews of other books or review articles of books and scholarship in a particular area of the law will be welcomed. Book reviews should be of a minimum of 2000 words and review articles may be of substantially greater length. In the case of such reviews and review articles enquiries should initially be addressed to the Book Review Editor.

2. Length

Articles Normally 4,000 to 8,000 words, but longer pieces will be considered.

Comments for other sections of the Journal should be 4,000 words maximum.

Book Reviews should be at least 2,000 words and review articles may be substantially longer.

3. Headings and sub-headings

It would be helpful if articles and comments contained brief, useful headings and sub-headings. This facilitates the presentation of documents on screen. See also 11(c) below.

4. Cross references

Internal cross-referencing should be avoided unless absolutely necessary as an article appearing on screen appears as a continuous document without page breaks and therefore without page numbers. Consequently, internal cross referencing to a page number is not possible. Internal cross referencing must be to words in the text which will provide a unique text string (ie a uniquely identifiable phrase) for the html compiler (ie the person who converts your submission into a Web document) External cross references to other materials on the World Wide Web may be made by means of the URL (Uniform Resource Locator).

5. Footnotes

Footnotes should be kept to a minimum and reserved for discursive points. Too many footnotes tend to break up the flow of a document being read on a screen. In the html version, footnotes will appear at the end of the text and before the bibliography. In the pdf version footnotes will appear at the foot of each page.

6. Summary

Articles and comments should be accompanied by a brief summary (200 words maximum).

Method of citation

7. Authors are recommended to follow the Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA).

NB

1. OSCOLA requires a neutral reference in addition to a reference to the 'best report' of a case. For these purposes the neutral reference is the official one supplied by the court or tribunal. Unofficial neutral references should not be used.
2. OSCOLA requires the entire case names are italicised including the v but not the reference.
3. The current edition of OSCOLA is the 4th but the referencing of international materials is still in the 3rd edition.

Submission to the Editors

8. Editorial Committee

Contributions should be sent in the first instance to the relevant member of the editorial committee. The editors will welcome enquiries from individuals with proposals for articles or comments. Such a submission of material implies that the contribution contains original unpublished work and that it is not being submitted for publication elsewhere.

9. Identification of author

The author's (and any co-author's) name, qualification, position, institution, address and e-mail address must be included.

10. File Formats

Contributions will be accepted in data form only. Articles may be sent to the editors either as e-mail attachments or on 3½" floppy disc. No liability is accepted for loss or damage of materials submitted. If in any doubt, authors should check with their editor that the file format is acceptable.

In cases of difficulty, files should be sent to Bruce Grant at Newcastle for conversion to a format suitable for the editors. Any wordprocessed file format, e.g. any version of Word, Wordperfect, WordStar, Windows Write, RTF or simple text, and any disk format, is acceptable. Preferred disks are 3½" floppy, and preferred formats are MSDOS double or high density, and, in the case of Macintosh format, high density only. If you send unformatted text, please enclose a paper printout as well. Uuencoding is preferred for e-mail attachments.

Technical queries should be addressed to the Technical Director, Bruce Grant <bruce.grant@ncl.ac.uk>

11. Word-processing guidance

(a) Lay-out. In writing or editing a file avoid imposing a lay-out on the document by use of such devices as Tabs or the repeated use of Space-bar.

If a section or quotation is to be indented use the indent command in the word-processing package or commence section - (Indent) - and end it (Endent) - the indented section of text should also be preceded by a double carriage return and followed by same. For example:

In R v Brown [1993] 2 WLR 556 the position was summarised perfectly by Lord Lowry who stated (at p 583):

(Indent)"What the appellants are obliged to propose is that the deliberate and painful infliction of physical injury should be exempted from the operation of statutory provisions the object of which is to prevent or punish that very thing...."(Endent)

In the Web JCLI this section would appear as follows:

In R v Brown [1993] 2 WLR 556 the position was summarised perfectly by Lord Lowry who stated (at p 583):

"What the appellants are obliged to propose is that the deliberate and painful infliction of physical injury should be exempted from the operation of statutory provisions the object of which is to prevent or punish that very thing...."

NB Quotations whether short ones appearing in the body of the text or longer ones which are indented, should appear within double quotation marks.

(b) Paragraphs. Do not indent first line of new paragraph. The end of a paragraph should be indicated by use of two carriage returns.

(c) Headings. File conversion to html relies on the use of headings with the value <H1> - <H4>. The editors attempt to reproduce headings in the Journal's style sheet. The values are H1=arial 16; H2=arial 14; H3=arial 13 ; H4=arial 12; Normal=Times New Roman 12. If in doubt, please indicate your intentions in plain language e.g. (Heading, Sub-heading, Sub-sub-heading) and so on.

(d) Spacing. In typing text there should be only a single space-bar between each word and following a full-stop - double or triple space-bars should be avoided.

(e) Tables. If information is to be included in tabular form use the Table facility in the word-processing package - DO NOT create a table by using Tabs to align material.

(f) Fonts. The journal displays html files in Arial font and pdf files in Times New Roman.

(g) Graphics. If graphics are to be included please send a separate graphic format file. In general, we use transparent interlaced gif files, png, or jpeg, but it does depend on the size and function of the file in question.

12. Acknowledgement

The editors will acknowledge submissions as quickly as possible. Wherever possible contributors should supply an e-mail address which will facilitate communication. As far as is possible a definite decision on publication will be given within six weeks of submission. Articles, comments and reviews accepted for publication will be published in the next issue of the journal where the acceptance is given no later than two weeks before the publication of the next issue. A submission which is provisionally accepted subject to suggested amendments will be published where such amendments have been made to the satisfaction of the editors. Where a submission is rejected following reference to a referee, the referees comments will, at the discretion of the editors, be communicated to the contributor.

13. Amendment after submission

Contributors should note that submissions accepted for publication will appear in the form in which they have been submitted (unless amendments have been requested by the editors) and that an electronic journal does not have a 'page proofs' stage in the publishing process. If contributors wish to amend a submission they should promptly despatch an amended version of the article, comment or review in data form to the relevant editor detailing the nature and location of the amendments. If such amendments arrive less than two weeks before the publication of the issue in which the contribution is due to appear, it may not be possible to make the amendments and the contribution may be held over until the following issue of the journal.

14. Copyright

Copyright in all contributions accepted for publication remains with the authors, and the publishers acquire publication rights. Authors are free to re-use their own material but if all or any part of published material is reproduced elsewhere, the author should acknowledge the Web Journal of Current Legal Issues as the original place of publication.

© Web Journal of Current Legal Issues: