Instructions to authors

IDPL focuses on major issues of data protection and privacy law on a global scale, with a focus on issues of data privacy, data protection, and information privacy. Coverage includes:
• the full range of substantive data protection and privacy law topics (but note that we do generally not cover a number of legal issues that may fall under the rubric of ‘privacy’ in certain legal systems, but that are only peripherally related to data or information privacy, e.g., avoidance of being placed in a false light, protection of honour and reputation, reproductive rights, etc.);
• practice-related articles, which must, however contain legal analysis (i.e., articles merely containing checklists, practical tips etc. are not desired);
• discussion of economic issues, policy issues, and issues relating to the technical architecture of privacy, as long as they are primarily focused on legal topics;
• survey articles examining developments in the field over a particular time frame or in specific jurisdictions;
• thought-leadership pieces looking at trends and coming developments; and
• book reviews and notes on recent publications.
The journal prefers articles that are analytical rather than merely descriptive, and that have some practical relevance, though exceptions may be made in appropriate cases.

Authors should pay particular importance to observing the following rules:

• References should be in footnotes rather than in the text (except for editorials and comment articles; see below);
• There should be no boldface or italics in text, except in exceptional cases;
• OSCOLA style (NOT Harvard Blue Book) should be followed in the footnotes (see below);
• Headings should be numbered consistently;
• The article should be spell-checked based on UK English;
• Cross-references should generally be formatted as per our house style (‘see Blackstone (n 42), at 542’)
• Articles and comment pieces should have an abstract consisting of several sentences, in bullet-point format;
• The word limit should be respected (3,000 words for comments, 5,000 words for “Tomorrow’s Privacy” or thought-leadership pieces, and 10,000 words for articles);
• We refer to ‘data’ in the plural (e.g., ‘the data were processed for a variety of purposes’)

Articles

All articles should have a maximum of 10,000 words (including footnotes); articles shorter than this are favored. Articles should be accompanied by an abstract of 150-250 words (set out in 3-5 full sentence bullet points). Footnotes should be kept to the minimum necessary.

Comment Articles

Contributions for the “Comment” section, analysing recent key cases, legislation and topical matters, should be kept to a maximum of 3,000 words. Footnotes should not be used in Comment pieces: references should be given only for the citation of cases, legislation and literature, which should appear in brackets as part of the main text. Comment pieces should be accompanied by a short abstract set out in 3-5 full sentence bullet points. All Comment pieces should be written to the following template of headings:
• Title (descriptive)
• Name/citation of relevant case/legislation/material
• Single sentence summary
• Legal context
• Facts
• Analysis
• Practical Significance

Thought leadership pieces

Articles for the section "Tomorrow’s Privacy" should be a maximum of 5,000 words, and should relate to major developments or coming developments in privacy law, regulation, or politics. Footnotes should not be used in this section: references should be given only for the citation of cases, legislation and literature, which should appear in brackets as part of the main text.

OTHER REQUIREMENTS

The journal will give preference to contributions that have not been submitted for publication elsewhere. If submission has been made elsewhere, it must be clearly indicated.
Contributions should conform to the guidelines as to style and layout set out below. Footnotes are permitted in articles except Thought Leadership and Comment pieces (see above), but should be kept to a minimum, and not be used for making subsidiary arguments, which should be handled in the main body of the article.

SUBMISSION

Please read these instructions carefully and follow them closely to ensure that the review and publication of your paper is as efficient and quick as possible. The Editors reserve the right to return manuscripts that are not in accordance with these instructions.

Contributions should be submitted electronically via the journal's online submission system, online submission system.

HOW TO CONTACT THE EDITORIAL OFFICE

The Editorial Office can be contacted as follows:
Dan Jerker B. Svantesson
Managing General Editor/Book Reviews Editor
Faculty of Law
Bond University
Australia
Dan_Svantesson@bond.edu.au

MANUSCRIPT FORMAT AND STRUCTURE

Please prepare your typescript text using a word-processing package (save in .doc or .rtf format). Typescripts should be double-spaced. Please number each page.

Title page

The title should be short, specific and informative. The first name, initial(s), and surname of each author should be followed by his or her department, institution, city with postcode, and country. The fax, telephone number and Email address of the corresponding author should also be provided. It is editorial policy to list only one author for correspondence. Any changes of address may be given next to the Affiliations or Acknowledgements. A footnote stating 'The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first x authors should be regarded as joint First Authors' is permitted. Any deletions or additions to the author list after acceptance of the paper must be submitted in writing, signed by all authors, to the appropriate editorial office.

Abbreviations

Non-standard abbreviations should be defined at the first occurrence and introduced only where multiple use is made. Authors should not use abbreviations in headings.

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements and details of non-financial support must be included at the end of the text before references and not in footnotes. Personal acknowledgements should precede those of institutions or agencies. Please note that acknowledgement of funding bodies and declarations regarding conflict of interest should be given in separate Funding and Conflict of interest sections, respectively.
Further guidance on Conflict of interests is available at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/faq/for_authors/conflicts_of_interest.html.

References

In both the “Tomorrow’s Privacy” and “Comment” sections, references should be kept to a minimum and given in brackets within the main text of the article. In all other articles, references should usually be given in footnotes. Footnotes should be identified in the text by Arabic numerals and numbered in the order cited. Complete information should be given for each reference cited.
Citations are to be formatted in accordance with the Oxford Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities (OSCOLA 4th edition), http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/OSCOLA_4th_edn.pdf

Citation examples:
Books:
Cedric Ryngaert, Jurisdiction in International Law (Oxford University Press 2008)
Articles:
Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren, ‘The right to privacy’ (1890) 4 Harvard Law Review 194
Lee Bygrave, ‘Determining applicable law pursuant to European Data Protection Legislation’ (2000) 16 Computer Law and Security Report 252, 259
Contributions to books:
Bernard Oxman, ‘Jurisdiction of States’ in: Encyclopedia of Public International Law vol 3 (Elsevier 1997) 55, 59
Publications by regulators:
Article 29 Working Party, ‘Working document on determining the international application of EU data protection law to personal data processing on the Internet by non-EU based websites’ (WP 56, 30 May 2002)

Internet publications
Robert Gellman, Privacy in the Clouds: Risks to Privacy and Confidentiality from Cloud Computing (World Privacy Forum 23 February 2009),
Cases:
UK: Bowman v Fussy [1978] RPC 545, HL
ECJ: Case C–427/93 Bristol-Myers Squibb v Paranova [1996] ECR I-3457
ECHR: Leander v. Sweden, Judgment of 26 March 1987, Series A, no 116, ECHR
US: Roe v Wade, 410 US 113 (1973)
Continental European, e.g.:
Belgium: Cour d’arbitrage, arrêt no. 16/2005,19 janvier 2005
France: Cour de cassation, Ch. soc., 11 décembre 2001, no. 99-43.030
Germany: Bundesverfassungsgericht, Urteil vom 15.12.1983, BVerfGE 65, 1
Continental Statutes, e.g.:
Hessisches Datenschutzgesetz of 30 September 1970 (Data Protection Act of the German federal state of Hessen)
Loi n° 78-17 du 6 janvier 1978 relative à l'informatique, aux fichiers et aux libertés (French Act N. 78-17 of 6 January 1978 on Data Processing, Data Files and Individual Liberties)
Swedish Data Protection Act of 11 May 1973
Cross references
see Blackstone (n 42), at 542
In general when citing other legal materials, authors should use the approved form that is standard in the jurisdiction in question; above all consistency within the article is paramount.

JOURNAL COPYEDITING STYLE

This journal follows OSCOLA style. An online style guide is available at http://www.law.ox.ac.uk/published/oscola/oscola_2006.pdf.

PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE FIGURES AND EXTRACTS

Permission to reproduce copyright material, for print and online publication in perpetuity, must be cleared and if necessary paid for by the author; this includes applications and payments to DACS, ARS and similar licensing agencies where appropriate. Evidence in writing that such permissions have been secured from the rights-holder must be made available to the editors. It is also the author's responsibility to include acknowledgements as stipulated by the particular institutions. Please note that obtaining copyright permission could take some time. Oxford Journals can offer information and documentation to assist authors in securing print and online permissions: please see the Guidelines for Authors section at http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/rights_permissions.html Should you require copies of this then please contact the editorial office of the journal in question or the Oxford Journals Rights department on journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

For a copyright prose work, it is recommended that permission is obtained for the use of extracts longer than 400 words; a series of extracts totalling more than 800 words, of which any one extract is more than 300 words; or an extract or series of extracts comprising one-quarter of the work or more. For poetry: an extract of more than 40 lines; series of extracts totalling more than 40 lines; an extract comprising one-quarter or more of a complete poem.

SUPPLEMENTARY DATA

Supporting material that is not essential for inclusion in the full text of the manuscript, but would nevertheless benefit the reader, can be made available by the publisher as online-only content, linked to the online manuscript. The material should not be essential to understanding the conclusions of the paper, but should contain data that is additional or complementary and directly relevant to the article content. Such information might include more detailed methods, extended data sets/data analysis, or additional figures.
It is standard practice for appendices to be made available online-only as supplementary data. All text and figures must be provided in suitable electronic formats. All material to be considered as supplementary data must be submitted at the same time as the main manuscript for peer review. It cannot be altered or replaced after the paper has been accepted for publication, and will not be edited. Please indicate clearly all material intended as supplementary data upon submission and name the files e.g. 'Supplementary Figure 1', 'Supplementary Data', etc. Also ensure that the supplementary data is referred to in the main manuscript where necessary, for example as '(see Supplementary data)' or '(see Supplementary Figure 1)'.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Upon receipt of accepted manuscripts at Oxford Journals authors will be invited to complete an online copyright licence to publish form.

Please note that by submitting an article for publication you confirm that you are the corresponding/submitting author and that Oxford University Press ("OUP") may retain your email address for the purpose of communicating with you about the article. You agree to notify OUP immediately if your details change. If your article is accepted for publication OUP will contact you using the email address you have used in the registration process. Please note that OUP does not retain copies of rejected articles.

It is a condition of publication for all Oxford Journals that authors that authors either assign copyright or grant an exclusive licence to Oxford University Press or the sponsoring Society. This ensures that all of the necessary rights needed for publication of the article are in place including provision for any requests from third parties to reproduce content from the journals are handled efficiently and consistently by OUP, enabling the content to be as widely disseminated as possible. No article will be published unless the online licence has been completed. Any queries about the licence form should be sent as soon as possible to Rights and Permissions so that any issues can be resolved quickly and to avoid any delay in publication.

As part of the terms of the licence agreement, Authors may use their own material in other publications written or edited by themselves provided that the journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication and Oxford University Press as the publisher. As the Author(s), copyright of the Article remains yours (or your employer’s if your employer claims copyright in your work). See here for full details of Oxford Journals' copyright policy and the rights retained by you/your institution under the terms of the licence. Please note that for any content published as part of the Oxford Open program, there is an extended range of rights retained by you as the Author. For more details, please go to: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/oxfordopen/policies.html.

Work submitted for publication must be original, previously unpublished, and not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If previously published figures, tables, or parts of text are to be included, the copyright-holder’s permission must have been obtained prior to submission. For more information on how to obtain permissions, please consult Rights and Permissions.

PROOFS

Authors are sent page proofs by email. These should be checked immediately and corrections, as well as answers to any queries, returned to the publishers as an annotated PDF via email or fax within 3 working days (further details are supplied with the proof). It is the author's responsibility to check proofs thoroughly.

OFFPRINTS

Authors will receive electronic access to their paper free of charge and one free copy of the issue in which their paper appears. Printed offprints may be purchased in multiples of 50. Rates are indicated on the order form which must be returned with the proofs. For an offprint order form click here.

ADVANCE ACCESS

Advance Access articles are published online soon after they have been accepted for publication, in advance of their appearance in a printed journal. Appearance in Advance Access (in either of the models below) constitutes official publication, and the Advance Access version can be cited by a unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier). When an article appears in an issue, it is removed from the Advance Access page.
Articles posted for Advance Access have been copyedited and typeset and any corrections included. This is before they are paginated for inclusion in a specific issue of the journal. Once an article appears in an issue, both versions of the paper continue to be accessible and citable.

PUBLICATIONS RIGHTS POLICIES

See http://www.oxfordjournals.org/access_purchase/publication_rights.html for our policies regarding publications rights, including publication in online repositories.

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