GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS 1. The ... - Hart Publishing

GUIDELINES FOR CONTRIBUTORS
1. The Journal of Media Law welcomes unsolicited contributions for all sections of the journal. The
Editors are always pleased to hear from intending contributors and to offer general advice on the
preparation of articles for publication. Names and addresses for the editorial team appear inside
the front cover of the journal or can be accessed at www.hartjournals.co.uk/jml. Every contribution
should be accompanied by a statement that it is the author’s own original work, that it is not
being considered for publication elsewhere, and that it does not constitute a substantial repetition
of work published or to be published elsewhere.
2. The Comment and Analysis section is designed to contain shorter articles, which are nevertheless
long enough to make an argument, on recent cases or major developments. Contributions to
this section should ideally be between 2,000 and 6,000 words. Submissions will be considered for
publication by the Editors in consultation with members of the Editorial Board.
3. Articles for the main body of the journal may be on any subject relating to media law and regulation.
Articles in the main section of the journal will normally be between 8,000 and 12,000 words,
but contributions outside this range will be considered at the Editors’ discretion. All full-length
articles will be subject to blind refereeing as well as consideration by the Editors in consultation
with the Editorial Board.
4. Authors of both Comment and Analysis papers and full-length Articles are asked to submit two
typescript copies, one of them without the author’s name and affiliation or any other indication
of provenance (eg in cross-references to other works by the same author). An abstract of between
100 and 150 words should be submitted with the contribution. This will appear on the journal’s
website if the article is published. With all contributions, a list of four or five keywords should be
submitted, which encapsulate the principal subjects covered by the paper.
5. The Book Reviews section is designed to provide short commentaries of around 1,000 words
on recent and important contributions in the field of media law. Longer review articles of up to
4,000 words, which explore the issues raised in a particular work or works in more depth, are also
welcome. If you are considering submitting a book review for the journal please contact Rachael
Craufurd Smith at r.c.smith@ed.ac.uk. Material for the Book Reviews section will be considered
for publication by the Editors in consultation with members of the Editorial Board.
6. All typescripts should be printed single-sided, using a clearly legible type and a solid black ink.
There should be ample margins and type should be double-spaced throughout, including any
notes. Notes must be presented as consecutively numbered footnotes. Notes should be kept to a
minimum. Contributions to the Comment and Analysis section may have notes but these should
be minimised. Autobiographical details should be attached as a footnote to the contributor’s name,
marked using an asterisk symbol, and include the contributor’s position and institutional affiliation.
Degrees and other personal accomplishments should not be included. All other footnotes
should be numerical, starting with number 1.
7. In addition to the printed typescript, contributors should submit an electronic copy of their
piece on disk or by email. The electronic copy must exactly match the paper copy. Please write
clearly on the disk or on an attached piece of paper the word-processing software used and the
name of the file(s) in which the contribution is stored. Please virus-check your disk and/or files
before submission.
8. All submissions must comply with the journal’s house style guidelines, as set out below.

Journal of Media Law
House style
Except where specifically noted below, the house style follows the Oxford Standard Citation for
Legal Authorities (OSCOLA). OSCOLA can be downloaded at www.law.ox.ac.uk/publications/
oscola.php. While OSCOLA is not a style guide, the introduction to it includes a few recommended
texts that will prove useful to contributors.
Spelling
• Standard UK spelling: ‘-ise’ / ‘-isation’ / ‘-ising’. ‘z’ should remain when quoting sources.
• Use UK English spellings in your text: ‘colour’, ‘favour’, etc.
Punctuation
• Use single quotation marks, reserving double ones for quoted matter within a quotation.
• Ellipsis: use three full points spaced from the words on either side to indicate matter omitted
from a quotation … like this. Do not use an extra full point to indicate the end of a sentence
before or after the ellipsis.
• Do not use the serial comma – ie, the comma before ‘and’ or ‘or’ in lists of three or more items,
unless it is necessary for the sake of sense: ‘red, white and blue’.
• Abbreviations and initials should not be given full points, and no extra spaces should be added.
Thus ‘eg’ is correct rather than ‘e.g.’, HLA Hart not H.L.A. Hart or H L A Hart.
Italics
• Use italics for emphasis, not bold.
• Italicise foreign words and terms including ibid, sic and passim. Do not italicise ‘cf’ or ‘see also’,
etc. Generally, where a foreign word is in common usage, do not italicise.
• Use italics for the titles of books, journals, works of art, films, and the names of ships.
Abbreviations
• Spell out all but the commonest abbreviations at the first mention in your paper; thereafter, an
abbreviation may be used without explanation. Exception: all journal titles must be given in
full.
• Use ‘per cent’ in the text unless it appears many times, in which case use %. The latter may be
used in footnotes.
Quotations
Quotations of more than 40 words in length, or particularly significant quotations, should be broken
off from the main text and ‘displayed’. Leave an extra line space above and below the displayed
quotation, and indent it by adjusting the left margin. Do not key it in italic type.
Numbers
• Omit as many digits as possible in number ranges, except between 11 and 99 and between 10
and 19 in any hundred: 25–26, 120–2, 318–19. Do not elide figures when a range of years is
referred to crossing between centuries: 1820–1910.

Journal of Media Law
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• Dates are formulated in the order day, month, year, without commas: 11 November 1918.
• Spell out numbers up to nine and use figures from 10. However, use figures for: units of measure:
‘30 kilometres’; dates: ‘9 September 2001’; people’s ages: ‘she was 58 years old’. Use words
at the beginning of a sentence: ‘Two hundred and fifty gold bars were stolen’, and for approximate
numbers: ‘At least a thousand people were present.’
Websites
• Omit ‘http://’ where the web address begins ‘www’; otherwise leave it in.
• Please double-check that web addresses are accurate before submitting your paper.
• Where several web addresses appear in your footnotes, indicate in the first (asterisked) footnote
the date on which you double-checked the addresses. Otherwise indicate the date in
brackets after the website.
Examples
* Lecturer, University of Cambridge, UK. All websites accessed 6 February 2013.
or
25 www.law.ox.ac.uk/publications/oscola.php (accessed 6 February 2013).
Cases, legislation etc
• Case references should be given in full the first time they are mentioned.
• Do not include a full stop after the ‘v’ in case names: Roe v Wade.
• Do not italicise the titles of legislation and other primary sources: UN Convention, Working
Time Directive, Accident Compensation Act 1972 (NZ).
• Please refer to OSCOLA for other aspects of house style regarding cases etc.
Books, journals etc
• Authors’ first names should appear in full unless the common convention is to use initials
only: HLA Hart, FW Maitland, but Hans Kelsen, John Finnis.
• Books should be cited in the following form: author, | Title | (publisher, edition year) | page
number if necessary.
• Article citations should be set out as follows: author, | ‘Title’ | (year) | volume(issue) | Journal
Name | start page (not the complete page range).
• Please note that, in contrast to the OSCOLA requirements, all journal titles should be given in
full and italicised.
• Chapters in books should be set out as follows: author, | ‘Chapter Title’ in | Editor Name (ed),
| Title | (publisher, edition year) | chapter/page number(s).
• Refer to works already cited as follows: ‘See Maitland (n 3) 435’.
• ‘Ibid’ should be used where a reference is to the immediately preceding note, while ‘ante’, ‘post’,
‘op cit’, ‘loc cit’, ‘supra’ and ‘infra’ should all be avoided. Do not include a full stop after ‘n’ or
after ‘ibid’.

Journal of Media Law
Examples
1 Mary Bickel, The Least Dangerous Tree (Yale University Press, 2nd edn 2013) 34.
2 A King, ‘Institutional Approaches to Judicial Restraint’ (2008) 28 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
409.
3 Ibid, 412.
4 Evan Keating, ‘The Liability of the World’ in Stephen Williams and Xander Mulhall (eds), This
is the Book (Yale University Press, 2013) 245–312.
5 See Bickel (n 1) 37.
Book reviews
To refer to page numbers within the work under review, insert the page number in parentheses
within the text. Do not precede this with ‘p’ or ‘pp’. For example: ‘The content of a human right is
also the content of the corresponding duty (97).’ Should the review be of more than one title, use
the author or authors’ names, or the title of the book, as a short form, followed by the number,
in parentheses. For example: ‘(Fleming, 185).’ References to all other works should be supplied as
normal, in footnotes.