Submission Guidelines for Blog Posts

Submissions are welcomed from students, academics, professionals, and practitioners alike. Please follow the guidelines below to write guest-posts for Law School Policy Review.

1. The submission should deal with a relevant and contemporaneous issue concerning any area of the law or government policy. Only original content will be accepted. Submissions will be screened for plagiarism.
2. Submissions must be made through this form where the manuscript should be in the form of a Microsoft Word document (.docx). The Word document title and body must not contain any personal information of the author such as name and institution. 
3. All submissions made by students of the National Law School of India University, Bangalore have to be sent to lawschoolpolicyreview@nls.ac.in. 
4. In case of articles on very recent developments which may lose novelty or relevance within days, authors may request an expedited review by adding the word “Expedited” in the title of the piece.
5. The submission should preferably be between 1,800 to 3,000 words. This stipulation is flexible at the Editors’ discretion in exceptional cases.
6. The body of the email must contain a short bio of the author(s) and the name of the institution that they are affiliated to. Co-authorship of up to three authors is permitted.
7. References must be in the form of hyperlinks, linked to keywords and phrases in the body of the submission. Use of footnotes/endnotes should be limited to circumstances where a hyperlink reference is not available. For footnotes/endnotes, the Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) (4th edition) must be adhered to. Authors are advised to be precise while referencing, such as by hyperlinking the relevant statutes and judgements, and citing the precise provisions and chronology in brackets.
8. Authors are also requested to attach an image to accompany the piece (if selected for publication). The Image should be representative of the submission’s topic, area or argument. It should be high quality (upwards of 1000p) with an aspect ratio of 2:1. Please mention the image source in the form, for the purpose of giving creator credits. 
9. Please do not send pieces that have already been submitted elsewhere for review.

About the Review Process

The Editorial Board reserves final discretion over whether a piece shall be accepted or rejected for publication on the blog and will review the submissions in the manner described as follows, insofar as possible.

1. The board will evaluate submissions on the basis of criteria including but not limited to originality, argumentation, language, structure and analysis. Purely descriptive pieces are discouraged. Editors shall compare submissions with existing literature available elsewhere to assess novelty. The Board reserves the right to reject a piece at any stage, if it is noticed that these criteria are not duly met.
2. Authors must ensure that their chosen theme/arguments have not already been substantially covered in past articles (the search tool on our website can be utilized for this). Such submissions will be rejected without review. However, this does not apply to responses/contrary opinions/different perspectives to existing content.
3. As per our 2-stage review cycle, the Editorial Board may take up to 14 days to respond to submissions. Once accepted, the submission shall be published within 7 days of acceptance. “Expedited” articles shall be reviewed within 7 days.  Such exception shall be granted solely on the discretion of the Editorial Board, otherwise, the submission will be relegated to the normal review cycle.
4. While responding to the Editor’s comments, authors are requested to retain the comments and make all edits in “track changes” mode in the review document itself.
5. Please note that editors will directly respond with the verdict to each submission, as per the stipulated timeline.  Due to our volume of submissions, we do not send formal acknowledgements of receipt.
6. Once posted on LSPR, a submission may be cross-posted on other platforms. The cross-post must carry the words ‘First posted on Law School Policy Review’, with a link to the LSPR post.
   

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Please reach out to us at lawschoolpolicyreview@nls.ac.in for any clarifications.

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