Publication frequency

The journal publishes two issues per year.

 

Open Access Policy

This journal is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or to use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This journal does not charge article processing fees.

 

Copyright and license

Authors retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. Articles are published under the license Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), which allows others to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or to use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. When reused, the authorship of the work must be stated and reference made to the original publication in this journal.

The journal encourages authors to make their research data openly available via an appropriate repository to aid replication and/or use of research material.

 

Archiving policy

This journal utilises Portico and PKP Preservation Network to create permanent archives for the purposes of preservation and restoration.

 

Peer Review Policy

Utrecht Journal of International and European Law considers every submission it receives. The Board of Editors carefully reviews the articles based on topic, level of academic content and style. Subsequently, the most promising articles are submitted to our referees. In order to be passed on for peer review, the article must be recommended by both the Editors whom were asked to review it in detail and must be approved by a majority of the Editorial Board. The authors must also make any requested changes before review.

We apply a double blind peer review, meaning that the author's name and affiliation are not made public to the referee or Editorial Board (apart from the Deputy Editor-in-Chief). The referee's name and affiliation are also not revealed to the author.

Our Referee Committee includes professors and practitioners who are experts in the field of European and international law. Two reviewers will assess the article and decide whether it is fit for publication in our academic journal. Their decision will be based on the following criteria:

1. Scope
2. Accurate content
3. Structure
4. Academic language
5. References
6. Contribution to academia
7. The author's capability to distinguish facts from opinions

The final decision on whether to publish or abstain therefrom is made by the Board of Editors. However, no article will be published unless approved by the Referee Committee. If revisions to an article are requested, a final decision on publication will only be made after the revisions have been submitted.

We maintain contact with the authors by email and we expect authors to be available during the reviewing process.

The journal is happy to accept submissions of papers that have been loaded onto preprint servers or personal websites, have been presented at conferences, or other informal communication channels. These formats will not be deemed prior publication. Authors must retain copyright to such postings. Authors are encouraged to link any prior posting of their paper to the final published version within the journal, if it is editorially accepted.

Members of the editorial team/board are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. A competing interest must also be declared within the submission and any resulting publication.

 

Editing Process

The first step in the editing process is simply reading your article. The editors do this as a first check to make sure the article is of sufficient quality and that it is appropriate for the current call for papers. At this point, the editors will also check to make sure you adhered to the citation guidelines in your article.

If your article passes this stage, we will send it to a referee to review based on academic level and content. The executive editor will contact you about the results of this review process and we will send you any comments or suggestions from the referee about your article. If your article is accepted, we will ask you to make the changes suggested by the referee. We will contact you to set an appropriate deadline to get the improved version back from you. At this point, our editorial board will read the article closely for style, form, content, and language use. This process will involve close contact with you, the author, and it is therefore imperative that you are available during this period.
After editing the structure and content of the article, the editorial board will send the article to a "specialist" editor. The "specialist" editor will be a native or near-native English speaker with an academic legal background. These "specialists" are excellent writers and jurists and are able to improve the article to a near-native level. The executive-editor will be responsible for finding and communicating with these editors.
After your approval of the final version, the article will be published in the journal.

What editing entails:
The editing tasks will be divided among two groups, the editorial board and the specialist editors.
The editorial board will pay attention to the following matters when editing: 

• Strength of argumentation.
• Structure of the paper.
• Citations in the paper.

The specialist editors will pay attention to the following matters when editing:

• Language use.
• Style.

 

Privacy Policy

Can be found here.

 

Reproducibility

Open Data

The journal strongly encourages authors to make all data associated with their submission openly available, according to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). This should be linked to from a Data Accessibility Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication. . If data is not being made available with the journal publication then ideally a statement from the author should be provided within the submission to explain why. Data obtained from other sources must be appropriately credited.

Structured Methods

As the traditional Materials and Methods section often includes insufficient detail for readers to wholly assess the research process, the journal encourages authors to publish detailed descriptions of their structured methods in open, online platforms such as protocols.io. By providing a step-by-step description of the methods used in the study, the chance of reproducibility and usability increases, whilst also allowing authors to build on their own works and gain additional credit and citations.

Open Code

If research includes the use of software code, statistical analysis or algorithms then we also recommend that authors upload the code into Code Ocean, where it will be hosted on an open, cloud-based computational reproducibility platform, providing researchers and developers with an easy way to share, validate and discover code published in academic journals.

For more information on how to incorporate open data, protocols.io or Code Ocean into a submission, please visit our reproducibility page.

 

Preprint Policy

The journal allows authors to deposit draft versions of their paper into a suitable preprint server, on condition that the author agrees to the below:

• The author retains copyright to the preprint and developed works from it, and is permitted to submit it to the journal.
• The author declares that a preprint is available within the cover letter presented during submission. This must include a link to the location of the preprint.
• The author acknowledges that having a preprint publicly available means that the journal cannot guarantee the anonymity of the author during the review process, even if they anonymise the submitted files (see review policy).
• Should the submission be published, the authors are expected to update the information associated with the preprint version to show that a final version has been published in the journal, including the DOI linking directly to the publication.

 

 ORCID

 

The journal strongly recommends that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). Registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. As the ORCID remains the same throughout the lifetime of the account, changes of name, affiliation, or research area do not effect the discoverability of an author's past work and aid correspondence with colleagues.

The journal encourages all corresponding authors to include an ORCID within their submitting author data whilst co-authors are recommended to include one. ORCID numbers should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.

 

Expected behaviour

The journal does not tolerate abusive behaviour or correspondence towards its staff, academic editors, authors, or reviewers. Any person engaged with the journal who resorts to abusive behaviour or correspondence will have their contribution immediately withdrawn and future engagement with the journal will be at the discretion of the editor and/or publisher.