Submissions

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About

Legal history is traditional in its methods and techniques of research. This is not necessarily a problem, but researchers applying digital tools to legal sources need a place to go. The Journal for Digital Legal History ("DLH") wants to showcase both new methods and the application thereof, by including elaborate graphics, datasets, links, Jupyter Notebooks, metadata and tutorials. As such, the DLH does not limit itself to traditional formats and offers a platform for innovative research, to reach out to colleagues interested in novel approaches and methodologies.

We have a continuous call for contributions, please head to the 'News' page for more information. In addition, for each issue, one or multiple specific calls for contributions will be sent out, also to be found under the 'News' page.


Focus and Scope

The DLH aims to bridge the currently existing gaps between digital humanities, empirical legal studies and legal history. It features research by any scholar working on past legal sources and not just legal experts. Moreover, for each issue, we l invite a DH-researcher to present an article dedicated to ‘transferable methodology’. In other words, a researcher with a specific method or approach from a different field will be called upon, explaining how a technique, method or approach could be applied to legal history.

Mission:

  • Publish open access and without a publishing fee. Publish accompanying Jupyter Notebooks, R-Scripts, Source Code and Tutorials either through links or potentially embedded within the journal (after consultation of the editors).
  • If there is an underlying dataset and/or other additional documentation these should be published on Zenodo and references should take place by using DOIs (persistent identifier).
  • Maintain a culture of openness to developments from the field of digital legal history as a whole, not limited to geographical scope. However, where possible a balance will be struck to avoid too many articles with a similar approach.
  • Publish from January - November as one volume (year). Contributions will appear as soon as they have gone through double-blind peer and editorial review. The editorial will be published in early December, closing the year.

Submission Checklist

  • For articles, please use our template, and follow the style guide.
  • For descriptions of datasets, please use our dataset template, and follow the style guide.
  • Please pay close attention to our guidelines for authors.
  • Authors are strongly encouraged to submit their articles in electronic format (if illustrations are added, please use a 300 dpi resolution).
  • Authors who want to use illustrations must themselves take care of the necessary authorizations.
  • In principle, we can only publish images for which the rights have been cleared (or which are in the public domain). Please use JPEG -files for illustrations.
  • DLH only publishes original material, which has not been submitted elsewhere.
  • All authors always keep the full copyright to their articles, which they can reuse or reprint without any permissions having to be obtained. However, a mention of their first publication in the journal will be highly appreciated.

Copyright Notice

DLH allows authors to hold both the copyright and the publishing rights over their work without restrictions. However, a mention of their first publication in DLH will be highly appreciated.

The journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. The content of this journal may be shared and adapted freely, provided that fair attribution is given. As such, DLH is in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License


Peer Review

This journal operates a double-blind peer review policy. The reviewers can - if they agree - be mentioned in the editorial (without reference to the article they reviewed) to acknowledge the important work they have done to make the publication possible.


Licences

Journal for Digital Legal History allows the following licences for submission:

  • CC BY 4.0
    Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.


Publication Cycle

Publish from January - November as one volume (year). Contributions will appear as soon as they have gone through double-blind peer and editorial review. The editorial will be published in early December, closing the year.


Sections

Section or article type

Public Submissions

Peer Reviewed

Indexed

Editorial

Article

Data paper

Focus-section: Early Career Digital Legal Historians: dare, test and surprise

Focus-section: Global DLH: show, tell and teach

Other type of publication

Review

Short notice


Archiving

DLH is archived by UGent's library services on reliable servers and back-up systems. In addition, the journal fully supports and encourages the author self-archiving of all content. DLH is located on a Janeway-based publication platform that enables searching metadata and stable archiving in CLOCKSS.

Advertising Policy

DLH does not display advertisements.


Abstracting and Indexing Services

DLH is covered by the following abstracting and indexing services:

[the section will be updated as soon as we have information about this]