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Osgoode Home > Osgoode Digital Commons > Journals > OHLJ

 

About This Journal

Our History

The Osgoode Hall Law Journal (OHLJ) published its inaugural issue in June 1958. It was initially run entirely by a student board of editors with the support and encouragement of faculty advisors. The OHLJ’s goals, articulated in its inaugural issue, were as follows: 

"THE JOURNAL hopes to encourage student writing and to be the catalyst in a programme of legal writing which can be a rewarding educational experience … [b]ut THE JOURNAL should not serve exclusively those who care to write for its pages. We hope that the articles, notes and reviews collected here will be of interest to lawyers and students of the law and that our readers will give us the benefit of their criticism and advice. The most severe judgment is your indifference." 

 In 1984, Professor Allan Hutchinson was appointed the first faculty editor-in-chief, and the Journal took its present form of a joint student-faculty enterprise. The philosophy of the Journal was restated that year, building upon the original principles of education and relevance, while pioneering new conceptions of legal knowledge: 

 "Adapting a more expansive understanding of 'legal scholarship,' the policy will be to publish papers about law as much as of law. Although traditional forms of scholarship will be retained and encouraged, a greater range and style of writing will be actively pursued and published. The ambition is to make the Journal into a forum for the exchange and expression of new ideas about law in all its manifestations and meanings, both theoretical and practical. The criterion of publication will be quality and originality, not orientation or orthodoxy."

 This remains the bold and ambitious mandate of the Osgoode Hall Law Journal.

Aims & Scope

Adapting a more expansive understanding of “legal scholarship,” the OHLJ’s policy is to publish papers about law as much as of law. Although traditional forms of scholarship will be retained and encouraged, a greater range and style of writing will be actively pursued and published. The ambition is to make the Journal into a forum for the exchange and expression of new ideas about law in all its manifestations and meanings, both theoretical and practical. The criterion of publication will be quality and originality, not orientation or orthodoxy. 

The Journal has earned a reputation for excellence in publishing scholarly articles that represent a wide range of perspectives about law and legal institutions and for providing thorough, meticulous, and efficient editorial services to our authors. We aim to provide an interdisciplinary forum for legal innovation and for provocative approaches to legal knowledge. This ambitious mandate distinguishes us from other law journals and legal publications. We focus on publishing articles that present new theoretical generalizations, report empirical findings, or address the impact of legal developments on issues of social, political, or economic importance from a wide array of disciplinary and ideological perspectives.

Open Access Statement

 The Osgoode Hall Law Journal (OHLJ) is an open-access, peer-reviewed publication. OHLJ is published online and made available to the public for free on our website. The OHLJ does not charge authors a publication fee. The OHLJ is a forum for intellectual innovation and a diversity of perspectives on the law. The OHLJ’s goal is to disseminate a wealth of legal ideas widely and freely to help inform not just a Canadian dialogue, but a global and comparative one.

Copyright and Licensing

As reflected in the Author Agreement, authors retain copyright in their articles published with the OHLJ, but grant permission to the OHLJ to publish work under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (CC) license. Information on the CC license is embedded on each article published by the OHLJ. 

Authors are permitted to deposit an accepted preprint contribution to an online repository and to archive or self-archive a published contribution in an institutional repository provided that they provide attribution to, and cite, the original OHLJ citation. In particular, authors are permitted and encouraged to post their accepted preprint manuscript in the SSRN Osgoode Hall Legal Studies Research Paper Series with a note that the article is forthcoming in the OHLJ.  For more details, see our Repository Policy.

Peer Review

Manuscripts that have been accepted by the editorial board for external review will be passed to a minimum of two separate peer reviewers. The OHLJ uses a system of double-anonymous peer review. The identity of the author will not be provided to peer reviewers; the identity of peer reviewers will not be provided to the author. If a reviewer is aware of a potential conflict of interest they are expected to disclose this information to the editors before agreeing to complete the review. Peer reviewers are asked to provide comments and recommendations to the editorial board, who will make the final decision regarding publication. In some cases, the editorial board may ask the author to revise and resubmit. When this happens, the resubmitted manuscript must go through the peer review process again. The same peer reviewers who originally reviewed the manuscript may be asked to review it again, or new peer reviewers may be approached.

Plagiarism

The OHLJ, as part of its editorial process, regularly screens for plagiarism. Where suspected plagiarism is identified, the editorial board will take appropriate action, such as clarifying the situation and, where plagiarism is confirmed, removing a manuscript from consideration for publication.

AI Policy

The OHLJ follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. AI tools do not meet the OHLJ’s criteria for valid authorship. AI tools are unable to take responsibility for submitted work, and cannot be listed as authors on any scholarly work submitted to the OHLJ. Authors may use such tools in their research, but must declare which tools were used, and in what way, within their manuscript. Authors take responsibility for any content created or influenced by such tools, and are liable for any breaches of publication ethics that may stem from their use.

Archive Policy

The OHLJ is committed to ensuring future availability of digital content and will be archiving digital issues through CLOCKSS in early 2024.

Repository Policy

The OHLJ allows authors to deposit their accepted, preprint contributions to an online repository, such as that of SSRN—a repository with whom the OHLJ has a pre-existing relationship. Postprint, authors are permitted to archive or self archive their contribution in an institutional repository. In the case that an author wishes to republish their contribution, they must clearly state that the initial publication was made in the OHLJ and include both a citation and link to the OHLJ article’s webpage.

Please note that once a contribution is submitted, it is bound by our exclusive submission policy detailed here. For more details, see our Exclusive Submission Policy.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Osgoode Hall Law Journal can be found in the following indexing and abstract databases:

  • Book Review Digest Plus
  • Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database (Canadian Business and Current Affairs)
  • CBCA Reference (Canadian Business and Current Affairs)
  • Crossref
  • Dimensions
  • Gale Academic OneFile
  • Gale General OneFile
  • Gale Literature: Book Review Index
  • Gale OneFile: CPI.Q (Canadian Periodical Index)
  • Gale OneFile: LegalTrac
  • HeinOnline
  • Index to Canadian Legal Periodical Literature
  • Index to Legal Periodicals & Books
  • InfoTrac Custom
  • Lexis+
  • OmniFile Full Text
  • ProQuest Central
  • PubMed
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents)
  • Web of Science
  • Westlaw Edge Canada