About the Journal
Author fees
This journal is Diamond Open Access; it charges no fees to authors.
Publisher Information
Institute of Legal Practice and Development, www.ilpd.ac.rw, PoBox 49 Nyanza Rwanda.
Peer review
The articles and commentaries to be published in the Rwanda Law Journal shall be selected based on a Peer-Review Process. The Peer-Review Process ensures that the best articles and cases notes/commentaries are being selected for publication and the process is free from any bias.
To begin the process, articles shall be sent to the person that is in charge of accepting submissions. He/she shall be the only person that is aware of the identity of the author prior to final selection and this person shall have no role in the reviewing process.
The Chief editor or designated member of the Editorial Board shall then check to ensure that all identifying features of the author have been removed from the document and shall send out invitations to individuals that he or she believes would be appropriate reviewers. Potential reviewers shall consider the invitation against their own expertise, conflicts of interest, and availability; they can accept or decline, and if possible, when declining, they might also suggest alternative reviewers.
It should be noted that the Chief editor reserves the right to reject articles without review where it is clear that they are unsuitable for the journal. In this circumstance, the Chief shall have no obligation to explain the reason. The selected reviewers shall then set aside time to read the article several times. The first readthrough of the article is used to form an initial impression of the work, and if major problems are found at this stage, then the reviewer may feel comfortable rejecting the paper without further work.
If there are no major problems, then the reviewer shall read the paper several more times, taking notes along the way so as to build a detailed point-by-point review. The reviewer’s feedback is then submitted back to the Chief editor with comments and a recommendation to accept it or reject it, or with a request for revision – flagged as either major or minor – before it is reconsidered for publication (a form to be used is attached). The Editorial Board shall then consider all the returned reviews before making an overall decision on each article. This decision shall be based on the comments sent in by the reviewers.
The Chief Editor or any other designated member of the Editorial Board shall then send decisions to the authors indicating whether their article has been accepted, declined, or shall be reconsidered with revisions; these decisions shall also include any relevant comments that the author can use for future work. The reviewers that wrote the comments shall be kept anonymous. Any article that is to be reconsidered following revisions shall go through another full round of anonymous peer review upon resubmission.
Once it has been determined which articles shall be published, and any suggested revisions have been completed by the authors, the articles may go through editing by the Editorial Board members for compliance with style and citation guidelines, spelling and grammar, and other non-substantive requirements to ensure the highest possible quality works are published in the Rwanda Law Journal.
The Editorial Board shall then determine the order of articles for that edition of the journal, and once complete shall send the final version of the edition to the publisher if a hard copy is to be published, or shall send the edition to ILPD to be placed on the website.
The Chief Editor or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process shall be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Chief Editor/Board member shall have no involvement in the decision-making process.
Publication Scheduling
This journal charges one issue in one volume per year.
