•  
  •  

Osgoode Home > Osgoode Digital Commons > Journals > OHLJ

 

Submission & Review Process

Overview

The Osgoode Hall Law Journal accepts submissions on an ongoing basis and all submissions will be considered for upcoming issues.  Prior to acceptance, all submissions are subject to a rigorous review process by our Editorial Board, followed by peer review from subject-matter experts.

Submissions must be no longer than 20,000 words (including footnotes) to be considered for publication and may be submitted via the “Submit your Manuscript” tab on the navigation bar to the left. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact piacente@yorku.ca. If you are interested in submitting a paper to our Journal, please see below for greater detail. Submissions must respect the policies outlined on this page to be considered.

Open Access & Copyright 

The OHLJ is an open access journal that is free and available online. Authors retain copyright in their articles but grant permission to the OHLJ to publish work under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0(CC) license.

For more details, please see our Open Access Statement and Copyright and Licensing.

Exclusive Submission Policy

Authors must agree to be bound by our exclusive submission policy. This means that the paper has not been published elsewhere, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and will not be submitted elsewhere unless and until the OHLJ makes a final decision not to publish the paper.

Review and Editorial Process

As a top-quality, peer-reviewed, joint student-faculty edited scholarly periodical, the Journal gives every submission careful consideration via a rigorous, multi-stage, blind review process. The Journal reviews articles on a rolling basis, and the time from submission to decision can vary. There is no internal review during the months of December and April, during the examination period, or August, when the Editorial Board takes a one-month break.

Once submitted, manuscripts follow a process where they are reviewed and, if accepted, edited and published in accordance with the following stages. 

  1. At the first stage of the review process, submissions are pre-screened for length and suitability for review by the Editor-in-Chief and the Article Review Committee Chair. The Article Review Committee meets weekly and reviews two anonymized manuscripts each session. The Committee consists of the Editor-in-Chief and law students who serve as Senior and Associate Editors. Upon review, the Committee elects to approve or decline submissions for peer review. Authors will be notified if their manuscripts are rejected at either the pre-screening or article review stage.
  2. Approved manuscripts are sent to external reviewers where they are peer-reviewed. The external reviewers are subject-matter experts selected by the Editor-in-Chief and must complete their review under a double-anonymous peer review process, meaning that the identities of the author and the peer reviewers are not known to one another. Senior Editors on the Article Review Committee will then decide whether the article will be accepted unconditionally, accepted conditionally, rejected, or returned to the author(s) for revision and resubmission.
  3. After authors of accepted or conditionally accepted manuscripts make  the desired/required revisions, manuscripts are edited for publication. At this third stage, authors work with Senior and Associate Editors to ensure that manuscripts adhere to the OHLJ standards for publication. Senior Editors edit submissions for accuracy and veracity and provide authors with critical feedback and suggestions. All edits are reviewed by the Senior Style Editor (a third-year law student) before they are sent to the author for review. Finally, author(s) address the editorial suggestions and incorporate those suggestions they wish to accept. The objective of this stage of the Review Process is to ensure manuscripts adhere to the OHLJ standards while still maintaining the author’s unique voice and style. It should be noted that Senior Editors work on these edits throughout the semester cycle. As such, edits are typically completed prior to exam season (in December and April).
  4. Manuscripts are then passed to the Managing Editor and the Editor-in-Chief for further review and final edits. 
  5. After final edits have been made, manuscripts are passed to the OHLJ Production team, who oversee the final production and typesetting stage.
  6. Finally, Articles are published on the OHLJ website and included in various third-party electronic databases. As well, hardcopy publications are available upon request. It should be noted that if there is unreasonable delay by the author(s) in revising their submission, the OHLJ reserves the right to proceed with print and online publication of the issue and to include the author(s) delayed submission in a later online edition.

Submission Standards

The OHLJ undertakes a holistic review process that champions the criterion of quality and originality alongside the submission’s substance, impact, and style. Please note the Role of Authors in maintaining the Osgoode Hall Law Journal’s Publication Ethics standards 

Instructions for Submitting

With the exception of book reviews (see below), all submissions must be submitted online by following the instructions below. The submission process consists of the following four steps:

  1. Ensure you have the following items prepared:
    1. Article Title
    2. An abstract (Separate from the article body)
    3. Keywords for your article (optional)
    4. Article in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word, or RTF*
  2. Proceed to the Submissions tab. You will need to create or log in to your Digital Commons account.
  3. Click “continue” at the bottom of the page.
  4. Read and accept the Article Submission Agreement.
  5. Provide information about yourself.
  6. Provide information about any authors.
  7. Upload your article and related items.
  8. Click the final Submit button — a Submission is not final until all preceding steps have been completed and you click the final Submit button.
  9. If needed, you may revise any elements of your submission by clicking the submitted article’s title on your “My Account” page. 

The review process will begin as soon as the OHLJ receives a readable article, along with the abstract and article title.

*Please note that articles must be submitted without a title page, abstract, or page numbers. These will be automatically provided by our system.

Book Reviews

The OHLJ regularly publishes reviews of recently published books on topics related to law. Such reviews are routinely written by Senior Editors of the OHLJ, selected by the faculty Book Review Editor, and further reviewed and edited by members of the Editorial Board, the Book Review Editor, and the Editor-in-Chief. Book reviews may also be solicited by the Book Review Editor. Unsolicited submissions may be submitted and will be considered for publication by the Book Review Editor and Editor-in-Chief.

To submit a book review, please contact the Book Review Editor, Margaret Boittin, at mboittin@osgoode.yorku.ca. We encourage prospective authors to consult our short Book Review Guidelines.

Related Documents:

Special Issues

Special Issues are led by Guest Editors who are experts in the subject. Guest editors, together with the Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and Chair of the Article Review Committee, oversee the editorial process for special issue papers. Papers published in a Special Issue are collected together in a dedicated section of the Journal website and labelled on the issue page and in the archives.

The Guest Editor is responsible for soliciting and screening the appropriate number of articles. An invitation to participate in such special issues does not guarantee publication, and authors are explicitly informed of this possibility.

After submission to the journal, articles will go through the journal’s normal double-anonymous peer-review process. All special issues submissions receive at least one double-anonymous external review.  The Guest Editor will assist the Editor-in-Chief and OHLJ editorial team in identifying appropriate reviewers for the manuscripts; however, the Editor-in-Chief will make final decisions regarding the number or reviews and identity of reviewers. The Guest Editor agrees to keep the identity of all peer reviewers confidential and will not share this information or the identity of proposed reviewers with authors. 

All Guest editors provide an introduction to the special issue.  Introductions that do not make substantive claims and are intended mainly to introduce the articles in the special issue are not required to receive external peer-review but will be reviewed internally by the Managing Editor, one Senior Editor and the Editor-in-Chief. Article submissions written by Guest Editors undergo the normal peer review process.

 

For any inquiries related to a Special Issue, please contact the Managing Editor at managingeditor@osgoode.yorku.ca.