1. General Guidelines to Authors
a) Submissions to Mizan Law Review shall be original, previously unpublished scholarly articles, comments, notes, book reviews and case comments. The submissions shall be in English or Amharic. Submissions in Amharic require summary of the article or comment in about five hundred words.
b) The author of a submission shall confirm that it is not concurrently submitted to another journal.
c) The timeline for submission is from July 1st to September 30th for the first issue of a volume (published in March), and January 1st to March 31st for the second issue of a volume (published in September).
d) The submission of draft articles shall be sent to the Editor-in-Chief or the Associate Editor through the following contact details:
elstebek@gmail.com, elias_nour@smuc.edu.et, muradu1@yahoo.co.nz
e) Submissions shall be made in two separate Microsoft word document files, one with the author’s name, and a second Blinded Manuscript without author’s details. The text and footnotes of the Blinded Manuscript shall not use words that imply the author. The title page of the first file with author’s details shall include author's name, academic profile, institutional affiliation, e-mail address and telephone.
f) Authors whose articles are accepted for publication shall submit author identifier (ORCID) upon submission of the final version.
2. Definition of author relating to submission that emerges from a thesis
a) Mizan Law Review uses the realistic definition of authorship, and the journal shall not include the name of supervisor/s (advisor/s) of a thesis or dissertation as ‘corresponding author’ or ‘co-author’ in articles that emerge from chapter/s of theses.
b) The author can –in the first footnote– acknowledge that the article has benefitted from the supervision and advising.
c) Where the intellectual creation and writing up of specific section/s in the submission are done by the supervisor/advisor, this shall be stated to indicate co-authorship, and the text should not be part of the thesis.
3. Article processing charges and subscription fees
a) Article processing charges shall not be paid by authors.
b) No subscription fees shall be collected from sites and databases that host the journal.
c) Hard copy of the journal shall be distributed free of charge based on mailing list.
d) Donations and funding to each issue shall be acknowledged at the inside cover of the journal and at AJOL website.
4. Word count, font size and structure
a) Word count (including footnotes) of articles and short articles shall not respectively exceed 10,000 and 6,000 words. Footnotes are expected to be minimized by using in-text indications of citations and legal provisions where appropriate. Cited references shall be stated at the end of the draft article.
b) The Editorial Team may allow publication of an article which exceeds 10,000 words where condensing or splitting it adversely affects depth and content.
c) The maximum length for comments shall be 4,000 words subject to exceptions that may be allowed based on theme and content.
d) The text of submissions shall be in Times New Roman, 1.5 space, Font Size 12 (and Font Size 10 for footnotes). Submissions in Amharic shall be in Power Geez Unicode 1 or Visual Geez, Font Size 11 (and Font Size 9 for footnotes).
e) Articles shall contain an abstract of not more than 200 words, and a maximum of five key terms. Each key term is expected to have a single word, and shall not be more than two words.
f) The structure of submissions shall include Introduction, thematic sections with numerical designations, conclusion and cited references.
g) Section titles, Introduction and Conclusion shall be in Font Size 14, bold, and sub-sections (1.1, 1.2, etc) shall be in Font Size 12 bold. Footnotes shall be consecutive, and in superscript.
h) ALL CAPS shall not be used in titles, text or footnotes of submissions other than Acronyms.
5. Formats in footnotes and cited references
All footnotes and cited references shall observe the following style guidelines:
a) Short quotations up to 50 (fifty) words should appear in quotation marks in the text with a superscript footnote reference, while quotations of more than 50 words should be indented and be physically separate from the paragraph.
b) All case citations must include the name of the case, the date of the case, the case number as well as all other relevant details such as the Court.
c) All treaties cited should include the name of the treaty, the date of the adoption, article or subdivision referred to (and the date of entry into force, if necessary).
d) Proclamations, Regulations and Directives shall use the designation that is stated in the provision of the instrument that states its short title.
e) Foreign legislation shall be fully referenced with the name of the law, the date, and the Jurisdiction.
f) Reference to articles must cite the author’s full name, year of publication (in parentheses), the title of the article in quotation marks, the name of the Journal in italics, Volume and Issue of the Journal, and page number/s. Indication of DOI where available is recommended.
g) References to books should state author’s full name, year of publication (in parentheses), the title of the book in italics, the edition (where necessary), publisher’s name, and page number/s where appropriate.
h) References to chapters in books should state author’s full name, year of publication (in parentheses), the title of the chapter in quotation marks (where appropriate), the name of the editors of the book, (e.g: in, …, …, editors), the title of the book in italics, the edition (where necessary), publisher’s name, and page number/s where appropriate.
i) Cited references submitted at the end of an article (in alphabetical order and 0.3 hanging layout) shall use the same order and elements indicated under “f”, “g” and “h” above except author’s name which should start with surname followed by a comma and first name.
j) Footnotes shall use the following options for internal cross-references:
- Author’s surname followed by infra note (infra in italics), the number of the footnote, and page number
- Author’s surname followed by supra note (supra in italics), the number of the footnote, and page number;
- Ibid, for the same source and page number or legal provision that is immediately before the footnote;
- Id., p…, for the same source that has a different number, followed by the page number or legal provision.
6. Declaration on ethical standards
Authors shall submit a declaration that:
a) the submission is not previously published;
b) the submission is his/her/their original work and is not duplicate or excerpt of one’s own previously published work;
c) the submission is not concurrently under review in another journal or publication;
d) all sources are acknowledged, in addition to which quotation marks are used if 4(four) to 50(fifty) words are taken from a source in the same form and sequence;
e) all direct quotations beyond 50 (fifty) words are indented to clearly distinguish the text from the paragraph;
f) there is no financial or institutional conflict of interest or conflicting interests among coauthors.
