1. EDITORIAL POLICY

The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Refugee Law maintain an editorial policy of strict independence. Neither the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board, nor the publishers accept responsibility for the views authors express in their contributions.

2. SUBMISSION OF ARTICLES

Articles should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at the address below.

Articles should be between 10,000 and 12,000 words, although the Journal can accommodate more substantial pieces. Shorter notes and comments will also be considered. Authors are reminded that the Journal has an international circulation and are therefore encouraged to ensure that the context of laws and policies is clearly explained (in footnotes, if appropriate) to readers who may be unfamiliar with the details of particular national or regional systems.

Typescripts and/or disks will not be returned unless special arrangements have been made to this effect.

Articles submitted for publication must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

Authors will be notified as soon as possible (normally within three months) of the Editorial Board's decision on the acceptability of their paper.

3. PREPARATION OF ARTICLES

Oxford University Press uses Microsoft Word, so authors should prepare their proposed article using that programme. If Word is not available, please save your article in rich text format (.rtf).

Please submit your article as an email attachment. If that is impossible, send it as a print out with a 3.5" floppy disk or Zip Disk.

Ensure the article is double-spaced throughout (including footnotes). Number pages consecutively.

A statement giving the author's name, the author's title, the author's present position and an address where he or she may be contacted by readers should be provided on a separate page. Please also supply a separate file with the author's name, affiliation, any word of thanks, and a statement as to when the law is accurate, e.g. The law is stated as at 1 January 2004. If accepted, there will be an opportunity to change this date later.

4. FOOTNOTES, REFERENCES AND LAYOUT

Authors will be expected to follow the style sheet which can be obtained from the Editor or downloaded from the OUP website .

Authors can also obtain further guidance from previous issues of the IJRL. As contributions accepted for publication must be put into Journal style, excessive formatting (including to DTP quality) should be avoided. We do not have the resources for both copy-editing and re-formatting and regret that contributions which depart substantially from IJRL style will be returned to authors for revision. Authors are responsible for checking the accuracy of all references.

5. PROOFS

Unless otherwise requested, proofs will be corrected by the International Journal of Refugee Law. Authors will receive a copy of their contribution prepared for the printer, on which typographical or other minor changes can be made.

6.EXCLUSIVE LICENCE AND OFFPRINTS

It is a condition of publication in this Journal that authors grant an exclusive licence to Oxford University Press. This ensures that requests from third parties to reproduce articles are handled efficiently and consistently and will also allow the article to be as widely disseminated as possible. In granting licence, Authors may use their own material in publications provided that the Journal is acknowledged as the original place of publication, and Oxford University Press is notified in writing and in advance. In consideration for granting licence, the publisher will supply the author with 25 offprints without covers of each paper, free url to the article and 1 gratis copy of the issue. Further offprints may be ordered at extra cost when returning the printer's copy to the Editor.

7. BOOK REVIEWS

Publishers submitting books for review should send them to the Book Review Editor, address below. Reviewers should include full publishing details including the ISBN and publisher/location.

8. CONTRIBUTIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE

From January 2002 all correspondence should be sent to:

Professor Geoff Gilbert
Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of Refugee Law
Human Rights Centre
University of Essex
Wivenhoe Park
Colchester
Essex CO4 3SQ
United Kingdom

Book Reviews:

Professor Ryszard Piotrowicz
Book Review EditorDepartment of Law
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth SY12 3DY
United Kingdom
ryp@aber.ac.uk

9. LANGUAGE EDITING

Particularly if English is not your first language, before submitting your manuscript you may wish to have it edited for language. This is not a mandatory step, but may help to ensure that the academic content of your paper is fully understood by journal editors and reviewers. Language editing does not guarantee that your manuscript will be accepted for publication. If you would like information about one such service please click here. There are other specialist language editing companies that offer similar services and you can also use any of these. Authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.

10. FUNDING

Details of all funding sources for the work in question should be given in a separate section entitled 'Funding'. This should appear before the 'Acknowledgements' section.

The following rules should be followed:

• The sentence should begin: ‘This work was supported by …’
• The full official funding agency name should be given, i.e. ‘National Institutes of Health’, not ‘NIH’ (full RIN-approved list of UK funding agencies) Grant numbers should be given in brackets as follows: ‘[grant number xxxx]’
• Multiple grant numbers should be separated by a comma as follows: ‘[grant numbers xxxx, yyyy]’
• Agencies should be separated by a semi-colon (plus ‘and’ before the last funding agency)
• Where individuals need to be specified for certain sources of funding the following text should be added after the relevant agency or grant number 'to [author initials]'.

An example is given here: ‘This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health [AA123456 to C.S., BB765432 to M.H.]; and the Alcohol & Education Research Council [hfygr667789].’

11. CONFLICT OF INTEREST INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF REFUGEE LAW

Conflict of interest defined

A conflict of interest is construed as a personal involvement in a case or other matter being reported; a meaningful financial interest in the matter, or a connection with an author, including personal relationships or direct academic competition, that might raise the question of bias in reviewing and judging work submitted for publication.

Policy for editors and reviewers

Editors will refrain from participating in the evaluation and selection of articles as to which they may be reasonably perceived to have a conflict of interest. Similarly, outside reviewers will be expected to refrain from participating in the evaluation and selection of articles as to which they may be reasonably perceived to have a conflict of interest, and they will be advised that, by agreeing to review a submission, they are warranting that they are aware of no such conflict.

Legal cases and funding

When a court case is the focus of an article published in the journal, the author will declare any involvement he or she may have had in the case (as advocate, judge, or litigant) in a footnote on the title page. Similarly, any such involvement by the International Journal of Refugee Law editor will be disclosed.
Authors will be asked to declare any financial support related to their papers published in the International Journal of Refugee Law so that these too may be disclosed in a footnote.

AUTHOR SELF-ARCHIVING/PUBLIC ACCESS POLICY FROM MAY 2005

For information about this journals policy, please visit our Author Self-Archiving policy page.