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Submissions

The EJLS accepts submissions on a rolling basis.

Please consult the information below to ensure that you adhere to all requirements regarding scope, anonymisation, formatting, substantive requirements, and referencing before submitting your article. Articles that do not adhere to these requirements may be rejected at the desk review stage.

Ethics, Publication Fees and Commitment to Double-Blind Peer Review

The EJLS is a wholly open access journal, which means that we make all articles freely available on our website and do not charge publication fees. We also require authors to make their research replicable, including, when possible, by making background datasets available to readers.

The EJLS is also committed to double-blind peer review, which means that we require articles to be anonymised. To safeguard the impartiality of our review process, we do not, under any circumstances, accept pieces that include suggested reviewers.

The EJLS adheres to the Core Practices established by the Committee of Publication Ethics. Authors are required to comply with the principles set out in The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, as well as the EUI’s Code of Ethics in Academic Research.

By submitting your work to EJLS for review, you are committing to refrain from submitting or publishing this work in any other journal, volume, platform, or website, regardless of type and nature, for the entire duration of the review and publication process. In the event that the submission is rejected, this obligation shall be terminated. In the event that the submission is accepted for publication, you will be asked to sign a Copyright License Agreement, which provides for limited exceptions to this commitment.

Use of AI

The use of AI tools is permitted for language and stylistic purposes, particularly to assist with clarity, grammar and structure. We recognise that English may not be the first language of all contributors and we encourage the responsible use of such tools to ensure submissions are linguistically accessible. However, the use of AI to generate substantive ideas, arguments, or analysis is strictly prohibited. Submissions must present original and novel contributions to academic discourse. If an author uses AI in a way that informs the substance of an idea or argument, this must be clearly disclosed in a footnote, including the prompt used to generate the response.

Plagiarism

We conduct multiple plagiarism checks during the editorial review process. All reports are reviewed and assessed by the Executive Board. In cases of self-plagiarism, if the submission forms part of a broader body of work -such as a thesis, working paper, or prior conference presentation- this must be explicitly disclosed upon submission. Self-plagiarism risks undermining the integrity of the peer review process by triggering plagiarism concerns during software-based checks. This can compromise the double-blindness of the review, delay editorial decisions, and ultimately lead to rejection. Therefore, it is the author’s responsibility to ensure proper citation and acknowledgement of the larger work throughout the article. Regardless of source, all references to the work of others must be fully and accurately cited. Authors should be prepared to provide a copy of any referenced material upon request by a member of the Executive Board.

Previously Published (Translated) Submissions

The EJLS accepts submissions that have been previously published in another language, provided that authors are transparent about the original publication, obtain the necessary permissions and ensure proper attribution. Any such prior publication must be proactively disclosed at the time of submission. Secondary publications must add clear value for our readership and will be assessed according to the same editorial and peer-review standards as all other submissions. Accordingly, acceptance is not assured. Submissions may be declined or require substantial revision to meet the EJLS’s academic standards and stylistic criteria.

Authors publishing with EJLS are encouraged to register for and provide us with an ORCID iD.

Scope of the Journal

The EJLS is particularly interested in contextual and/or interdisciplinary approaches to legal scholarship, but also welcomes well-written doctrinal law pieces.

All articles must fall within one or more of the following fields:

  • European law
  • International law
  • Comparative law
  • Legal theory

We do not publish:

  • Articles dealing mainly or entirely with a single national jurisdiction
  • Report-style descriptive pieces

Types of Publications

The EJLS publishes the following types of publications (word limits include footnotes but not abstracts, annexes, or tables of contents):

  • General Articles (9,000-12,000 words)
  • New Voices Articles (4,000-5,000 words)
    • Must be written by ‘early-career scholars’ (see New Voices for more details).
  • Book Reviews (1,500-3,000 words)
    • Please contact the Editor-in-Chief at EJLS@eui.eu before writing a book review to ensure that the book is within the scope of the Journal. We may also be able to assist you in acquiring a copy of the book.
  • Book Symposiums and Special Sections
    • Please contact the Editor-in-Chief at EJLS@eui.eu with any suggestions.

All articles must be original work, not previously published elsewhere, except in the following cases:

  • For General Articles, we welcome submissions that were previously published as working papers, subject to the following requirements:
    • When submitting the article, authors must write in the accompanying e-mail that it was previously published as a working paper.
    • If the submission is accepted for publication, authors must commit to replacing the working paper promptly on all platforms where it appears with the final version of the paper as published Online First or in an issue of the EJLS, with express acknowledgment that the paper has been published by the EJLS.
    • The article must not part of an established working paper series.
    • The authors must understand that the paper may still have to undergo significant changes when going through peer review.
  • For New Voices Articles, we also accept articles based on:
    • Core arguments from a conference paper
    • Key findings from a doctoral thesis

Substantial Requirements

Both General Articles and New Voices Articles must comply with general academic requirements. For example, they must:

  • Contain a clearly formulated legal research question or hypothesis
  • Respond coherently to the formulated question or hypothesis
  • Converse with and refer to existing literature on the topic and establish a gap in the literature that the article fills
    • In this regard, the EJLS encourages authors to cite early-career researchers and to reflect regional, gender, and linguistic diversity in their citations
  • Be original and properly reference the research or ideas of others
  • Be well-written
    • If practicable, please submit your article to a linguistic check or review by an attentive colleague before submitting.
    • While the EJLS will not reject pieces on linguistic grounds alone, syntax errors and awkward formulations can obscure argumentation and make it difficult to pass through peer review.
  • Be well-structured
    • The absence of a logical connection between the different parts of a paper will lead to its rejection. The submission should not contain passages that are not related to the author’s argument. Many (but not all) articles will benefit from incorporating the following sections, though they need not be labeled as such:
      • An introduction, providing context and explicating the research question
      • A section engaging with the state of the art and identifying a gap in the literature that the article will fill
      • A section explaining the methodology or theoretical framework applied in the article
      • A section conducting the analysis
      • A conclusion presenting the results of the analysis and answer(s) to research question and potentially avenues for future research

Checklist Before Submitting Your Article

At the time of submission, all articles must be submitted in word format to submissions.ejls@eui.eu.

All submissions should include:

  • An anonymised version of the article
  • A title page in a separate file specifying each author’s:
    • Name and affiliation
    • Email address
    • ORCID iD
    • Social media handles (for promotion)
  • The accompanying email, which will act as cover letter and should include any information that might impact publication, such as:
    • Potential conflicts of interest
    • Whether the article, in whole or in part, has previously been published as a working paper or as part of a thesis or conference paper
    • Whether the article, in whole or in part, builds on previous work published in another language
    • For New Voices pieces, a brief explanation of how each author qualifies as an ‘early-career scholar’ and how the article satisfies all other New Voices requirements

All submitted articles must:

  • Be within the word limits for the relevant category of article
  • Be properly referenced in line with OSCOLA and the EJLS Style Guide
    • If you are using a reference manager (eg Endnote, Zotero, Refworks), you can make this easier by downloading the applicable OSCOLA output style.
  • Contain the following:
    • Table of contents
    • An abstract (150-200 words)
      • This abstract must be in English, even if the article itself is in another language.
    • Clear headings and subheadings, i.e.:
      • I. [HEADING]
        • 1. [Sub-heading]
          • A. [Sub-sub-heading]
            • -[Sub-sub-sub-heading]
      • You are also welcome to have a look at our template to see how headings, direct quotes etc are usually formatted.

Submitting your piece

All articles must be submitted by the corresponding author to submissions.ejls@eui.eu. We do not accept articles that are submitted by anyone other than an author, including translation and editing services.

To make sure your submission does not end up in our spam folder, we recommend that authors send their submissions from a validated email address. For most authors, this means sending their submissions from their institutional address. For authors with no institutional affiliation, it means ensuring that their personal email has been validated by an online service.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.