Osgoode Hall Law Journal Manuscript Submissions
The Osgoode Hall Law Journal seeks to publish papers that make significant, original contributions to legal jurisprudence as well as their respective fields. We aim to provide an interdisciplinary forum for legal innovation and for provocative approaches to legal knowledge. The Osgoode Hall Law Journal invites the submission of unsolicited articles, commentaries, essays, and book reviews that fit within this mandate. If you have any further questions, please contact us at journal@osgoode.yorku.ca.
To submit a manuscript to the Osgoode Hall Law Journal, please read the complete instructions below before clicking the Continue button at the end of the document. When finished, you will receive an email confirming your submission.
Submissions Instructions
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:
- Read and accept the Article Submission Agreement
- Provide information about yourself
- Provide information about any co-authors
- Upload your article and related items
Before you begin, please be sure you have the following items:
- Article title
- An abstract (separate from the body of the article)
- Keywords for your article (optional)
- Article in one of the following formats: Microsoft Word or RTF.
The text of the article must be submitted without a title page or abstract. These will be provided by the Digital Commons system.
Please ensure that the article does not contain any author-identifying information, so as not to compromise our double-blind review process.
No part of the submission is final until all steps have been completed and you click the final Submit button. The review process begins as soon as Osgoode Hall Law Journal receives a readable article, along with the abstract and article title. Your submission will then be locked until a publication decision has been made. If you feel you need to revise your submission in the meantime, please contact the Journal Coordinator at journal@osgoode.yorku.ca.
Manuscript Specifications
- Cover – Please do not include a cover or title page within your submission.
- Format – Text should be double-spaced with one-inch margins. Footnotes should be formatted in compliance with the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (7th ed, 2010).
- Length – Articles must not exceed 20,000 words, including footnotes. Commentaries should not exceed 10,000 words including footnotes. Submissions of less than 4,000 words will not be considered.
- Tables and Figures – Tables should be created within the text document submitted, not copied and pasted from other software. Where possible, figures should be submitted in a vector format such as AI or EPS.
- Pagination - The pages in your submission must be numbered starting at page 1.
Book Reviews
To submit a book review, please contact the Book Review Editor, Richard Haigh, at RHaigh@osgoode.yorku.ca. We encourage prospective authors to consult our short Book Review Guidelines.
Exclusivity and Originality
The Osgoode Hall Law Journal does not consider manuscripts that are simultaneously under consideration for publication elsewhere, or have been published previously.
Timing and Article Review 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.
First, every submission is pre-screened by the faculty Editor-in-Chief and the student Chair of the Article Review Committee (ARC) to identify submissions that clearly do not meet the Journal’s mandate or high standards. Second, submissions that pass pre-screening are reviewed by the full ARC, comprising the Editor-in-Chief and usually 10 to 15 student editors, all of whom review and deliberate on the submission. Third, submissions that pass the initial ARC review are sent out for external review by 2 to 4 subject matter experts. Fourth, the Senior ARC (comprising the Editor-in-Chief and the 2 to 4 senior student editors who took part in the initial ARC decision) makes a publication decision in light of the external reviewers’ reports.
The decision options are to accept the article for publication as is, to accept it subject to specified minor revisions, to invite the author to revise and resubmit it after major revisions, or to decline to publish it. The Journal provides substantive feedback only on submissions that are sent out for external review. For those submissions, the external reviewers’ reports are included with the decision letter and the anonymized decision letter is sent to both the author and the external reviewers.
Authors will be informed of the Journal’s decision by letter from the Editor-in-Chief. Questions regarding the status of submissions should be directed to the Journal Coordinator by email at journal@osgoode.yorku.ca.
Editorial Process
Articles accepted for publication go through a thorough structural, copy and style edit. Each article is assigned a primary editor, who is also a Senior Editor on the Editorial Board. The primary editor is an author’s main contact during the editorial process. He or she will contact the author with various queries or suggestions regarding grammar, syntax, style, organization, and citation of sources, among other things, as the article is prepared for publication.
Submit Your Manuscript
Please click the Continue button to proceed with your submission. Shortly afterward, you will receive an email confirming your submission. After you have submitted your article, you have 48 hours to revise any of the submitted information by clicking the submitted article's title on your Digital Commons My Account page. After 48 hours, your submission will then be locked until a publication decision has been made. If you feel you need to revise your submission in the meantime, please contact the Journal Coordinator at journal@osgoode.yorku.ca.