Submission Guidelines

The KLR accepts academic papers on any legal subject and is also happy to consider papers that approach legal-related issues from, for example, a philosophical, historical, political, moral, economic, or psychological point of view. 

The KLR accepts full-length academic papers from scholars, practitioners and PhD students.

Short notes and current awareness notes will also be accepted from undergraduate and postgraduate students. 

The KLR accepts full-length articles, short notes, and  current awareness notes.

The ideal length of submitted articles is 10,000-15,000 words (including footnotes). Shorter and longer submissions are admissible, within reason.

Short notes should include 3000-4000 words (including footnotes).

Current awareness notes, such as case-reviews, book-reviews, and recent legal developments, should include 1000-2000 words.

For full-length articles, an abstract of 150-250 words should be included. This will allow easy identification of the main arguments raised by the article.

The Keele Law Review applies a double-blind review process. In order to ensure an impartial review of your submission, please do not identify yourself in your manuscript. You will be required to submit an anonymous main document and a separate title page with acknowledgments (including all sources of funding and support, and substantive contributions of individuals), affiliation, academic position, contact details, and co-authors' names. 

All manuscripts must be original and not under consideration with another publication or in another form, such as a chapter of a book. Authors of submitted papers are obligated not to submit their paper for publication elsewhere until an editorial decision is rendered on their submission. 

Manuscripts should conform to The Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA) which is designed to facilitate accurate citation of authorities, legislation, and other legal materials. Further information can be found at  https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/research-subject-groups/publications/oscola.

If the KLR General  Editor is of the opinion that an article provisionally accepted for publication needs minor revisions - including minor shortening, correction of errors in punctuation, spelling and style - such proposed changes will be made by the Editors and will not be resubmitted to the author for approval prior to publication if they do not alter the meaning or sense of the original manuscript. Authors may be asked to resubmit articles in response to the peer-review evaluation.  

Oxford English spelling should be used. Authors whose first language is not English are requested to have their typescripts checked carefully before submission. This will help expedite the review process. 

We will not be able to review papers that require significant proof-editing.

Open Access Online: authors retain the copyright in their articles. Articles are made available to allow readers to freely access and use the research provided by the author, as long as the author and the Keele Law Review are correctly attributed.  

Authors will receive a final proof of their article by email and it is essential that a current email address is supplied with all articles. Proofing instructions will accompany the file but the proof should be checked immediately upon receipt and return as per covering instructions. Only essential corrections should be made at this stage.