About the Journal

Focus and Scope

JLL focuses on the interdependence of language and law in society and its various facets. This includes theory of law and language, translation and intercultural issues, legal interpretation, law, media and literature, forensic linguistics, as well as applied issues like authorship attribution, language in the courtroom and computational aspects.

Peer Review Process

Research articles go through a two-step review process:

1. Editorial Peer-Review. The managing editor first reviews each manuscript to see if it meets the basic requirements and addresses issues that are relevant for the readership. This usually takes 1-2 weeks, after which authors are informed whether their submission is sent out for external peer-review. Simultaneously, the editor-in-chief reviews the article according to the same standards provided to external reviewers.
   
   
2. External Peer-Review. While being reviewed by the editor-in-chief, blinded manuscripts are also sent out to two experts in the respective field. Those reviewers are asked to commit within a week to whether they will provide a review within six weeks. Following the review, authors receive copies of the reviewers’ comments and the decision.

Peer-review assesses the merits of a contribution on the grounds of originality, relevance, thoroughness, methodology and style, and results in one of three decisions: acceptance, acceptance pending changes, or rejection. Where reviewers disagree, the editor-in-chief has the deciding say. Rejected articles are generally invited for resubmission, where authors are expected to address reviewers’ concerns. It is up to the editor-in-chief to relay resubmissions for external peer-review to one of the former reviewers as well as a new reviewer. If a resubmission is rejected, it may not be submitted to the journal again.

JLL strives to keep the time from submission to publication to a minimum. In the spirit of open access publishing, immediate access to research findings is one of the most important concerns for the Journal. Its editorial team is committed to quick turnaround, its reviewers are expected to reply timely and without undue delay.

Publication, Periodicity and Archiving

JLL articles are each published with a unique Digital Object Identifier (DOI), and backed up through secondary publication in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library.

JLL volumes are collated yearly (starting 2012) from articles that are published as soon as possible after submission. For details, see the previous paragraph (Review Policy).

Open Access Policy

As a platinum Open Access journal, JLL satisfies the Fair Open Access Principles, meaning it is entirely free of charge to both authors and readers, lets authors retain copyright in their contributions, and 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 benefits of Open Access for authors, other stakeholders and society are well-documented. JLL is wholly committed to the principle of Open as advocated by the Open Knowledge Foundation, and the selection criteria of the Free Journal Network (FJN), which accepted JLL as a member in 2018. See the Copyright Notice for details on the JLL license.

Form follows function: The journal is typeset in Alegreya fonts, an award-winning font family designed by Juan Pablo del Peral from a young collaborative type foundry in Argentina. Alegreya fonts are available under the Open Font License and reinforce JLL's commitment to openness.

JLL Policy on Scientific Integrity
— Publication Ethics and Editorial Guidelines

The International Journal of Language & Law (JLL) aspires to select and publish highest-quality research through a thorough and fair peer-review process. The journal expects its authors and reviewers to honour scientific integrity as a basic requirement of any well-functioning academic system. JLL is committed to good scholarly practice by following the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (online at: publicationethics.org/core-practices). These include the following obligations in detail (also available as PDF):

Editorial guidelines

Editorial independence

The editorial board decides on the acceptance or rejection of submissions solely on the basis of scientific quality, evaluated by double-blind peer review, and ethical and editorial guidelines. In particular, personal characteristics of the authors, such as ethnicity, gender, or political and institutional affiliations, do not influence the publication decision.

Peer-review process

Submissions to the Research Articles section are subject to a double-blind peer review. The decision of the editorial board to accept or reject a paper is based on two written reviews as well as on the publication ethics and editorial guidelines. Submissions to the Forum: Comments and Reviews and Reports: Society and Academia sections are subject to editorial peer review.

Confidentiality

JLL’s editorial staff treats unpublished texts and personal information of authors confidentially. These will not be made accessible to anyone outside the editorial team. Reviewers will not have access to the full text until after they have been assigned. Members of the editorial team do not use unpublished texts for their own research. In the case of conflicts of interest, members of the editorial board do not participate in the review and publication process.

Dealing with errors in published texts

If, despite quality control and scientific diligence on the part of the authors and editors, errors in the content of previously published articles become known, a corrected version of the erroneous text, transparently marked as such, will be made available.

Dealing with scientific misconduct

The editors reserve the right to take appropriate measures if scientific misconduct on the part of those involved in the editorial process becomes known (including plagiarism, citation manipulation and data fabrication). JLL is committed to taking suspicions seriously and pursuing them to the best of its ability and, if necessary, with the assistance of designated counseling agencies.

If serious scientific misconduct is revealed post-publication, affected articles will be retracted and authors excluded from future consideration. Reviewers will be likewise sanctioned if found to engage in scientific misconduct. Complaints and information regarding misconduct should be addressed to the current editors-in-chief Prof. Dr. Friedemann Vogel or Prof. Dr. Dr. Hanjo Hamann (editor@languageandlaw.eu).

Duties of authors

Good scientific practice

Submitted articles and the research work on which they are based must follow the rules of good scientific practice. Results and methods should be presented precisely and transparently to ensure the replicability of the study. Research data should be documented and archived according to the standards of the discipline. Contributions or parts of texts written from a particular subjective or disciplinary perspective are marked as such. The authors commit themselves to a scientific practice that excludes conflicts of interest and unethical behavior.

Authorship

All and exclusively those persons who were specifically involved in research activities (i.e., conception, data acquisition and analysis, drafting and revision) are named as authors. The order of the authors corresponds to their contribution to the research work. All authors have read the galley version of the article and agree to its publication. Other contributors may be acknowledged in an addendum to the text.

Copyright and plagiarism

The submitted articles do not contain any material that violates the copyrights or personal rights of others. All thoughts and formulations that originate from other sources are transparently documented and marked as such. By submitting a text to JLL, the authors agree to its open-access publication under the CC-BY 4.0 license.

Conflicts of interest and transparency

In the case of commissioned research, the institution funding the project must be named. Authors must disclose any financial or personal conflicts of interest to the editors. These include, for example, the receipt of honoraria or research funds, memberships and committee activities, personal relationships with persons or institutions involved, or political convictions that potentially conflict with an independent interpretation and presentation of the available research results.

Detailed information on what constitutes a conflict of interest have been developed by PLOS: journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests. JLL follows this definition.

Errors in published articles

Should the authors discover fundamental errors in a published text, they should notify the editors and contribute to a corrected version or erratum. In serious cases, the article may be retracted by the editors.

Duties of reviewers

Selection of reviewers

Review requests can be made by all members of the editorial team (managing editor(s), editor(s)-in-chief). The editors will ask for two reviewers who are doing or have done relevant research work and are considered experts in the research field of the submission. Requested persons decline the review,

• if they have conflicts of interest (as defined in plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests),
• if they believe they can identify the author(s) of the article,
• if they believe that the submission does not fall within the field of their expertise.

If in doubt, reviewers commit to use the decision-making tool from the COPE Council:
publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/considerations-for-peer-review-cope-flowchart.pdf.

Confidentiality

Submitted texts are subject to confidentiality, even if they are passed on to potential reviewers. Reviewers may not use texts and information for their own purposes prior to publication, irrespective of whether the submission is accepted or rejected.

Communication with the editorial office

Reviewers are obliged to report to the editorial office if they notice violations of good and ethical scientific practice during the review process, e.g., plagiarism. If review deadlines cannot be met, the editorial office must be informed as early as possible to avoid unnecessary waiting times for authors.

Journal History

JLL was established as "Language & Law" in 2012 by Lawrence M. Solan, Dieter Stein, and Peter M. Tiersma. The first seven years of its development were summarized by JLL's current editors-in-chief in a 2019 Editors' Progress Report.