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Osgoode Home > Osgoode Digital Commons > Journals > OHLJ

 

Submission & Review Process

Overview

The Osgoode Hall Law Journal accepts submissions on an ongoing basis. We aim to provide authors with timely decisions throughout the review process. Authors can generally expect an initial decision from our Editorial Board within two months of submission on whether their manuscript will proceed to external review. Manuscripts that advance are then sent for peer review by subject matter experts before a final publication decision is made.

Submissions must be no longer than 15,000 words (including footnotes) to be considered for publication. 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. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief, Professor Jennifer Nadler, at [email protected].

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 the OHLJ’s exclusive submission policy. While a manuscript is under consideration by the OHLJ, it must not be submitted to, or under consideration by, any other publication. Authors may submit the manuscript elsewhere only after the OHLJ has issued a final decision not to publish it. Failure to comply with this policy may result in a bar on future submissions to the OHLJ.

Review and Editorial Process

As a peer-reviewed scholarly journal jointly edited by students and faculty, the Journal gives every submission careful consideration through a rigorous, multi-stage, blind review process. The Journal reviews articles on a rolling basis. Authors can generally expect an initial decision on whether their manuscript will proceed to external peer review within approximately two months of submission. Please note that we do not conduct internal review during December, April, or August.

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:
    a) Article Title
    b) An abstract not exceeding 300 words (separate from the article body)
    c) 3-5 Keywords for your article
    d) Anonymized 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 and any other authors.
  6. Upload your article and related items.
  7. Click the final Submit button — a Submission is not final until all preceding steps have been completed and you click the final Submit button.
  8. 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 an article that complies with our submission guidelines, 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.

Author Guidelines

 Citations

Footnotes must conform to the 10th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (McGill Guide).

Format

The OHLJ requests that manuscripts be submitted as Microsoft Word (.doc) or Rich-text (.RTF) documents in 12-point, double-spaced Times New Roman. The OHLJ also encourages manuscripts to be submitted with a table of contents.

Anonymization

All submissions must be anonymized, meaning they are devoid of identifying information, including:

  • Name
  • Institutional Affiliation
  • Demographic Information
  • Acknowledgments

Self-citations should be redacted; however, if a citation refers to your other work, but there is no indication within the footnote or text that it is your work (i.e., no identifying phrases), then no redaction is required. The OHLJ will not consider submissions that are not anonymized.

Length

The OHLJ now limits the word count of submissions to 15,000 words, inclusive of footnotes. Submissions exceeding this word count will not be considered.

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, Kate Glover Berger, at [email protected]. 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.

For any inquiries related to a Special Issue, please contact the Managing Editor at [email protected].