Contributors Guide
GUIDELINES TO CONTRIBUTORS
The journal provides a forum for scholarly and professional discourse and exchange on a wide range of legal subjects. Original contributions are invited from academics and practitioners on all aspects of law. The Editorial Board will consider articles, commentaries, case reviews, book reviews and statute reviews. Manuscripts and revisions are to be submitted in electronic form to the Editor at editor@nglawdigest.com
We welcome contributions from Legal Practitioners, Solicitors, Barristers, Attorneys, Accountants, Business Consultants, academicians (including post-graduate students) and other professionals. Being a legal journal, all articles must primarily focus on legal aspects or issues with the goal of adding to our understanding of the law and how it can be best used or reformed; thereby highlighting and/or developing African legal jurisprudence. All articles must further be of relevance or interest to an African country or African countries notwithstanding that they may relate to a non-African case/matter/issue.
PRESENTATION
Articles are to be submitted in Microsoft word (2007 or later editions) double line spacing including (notes and references). The pages should be numbered consecutively. The first page should bear the title, abstract, name(s) of author(s), their title position, qualifications, organisation and a full address for correspondence including email and telephone numbers. The abstract should not be more than 100 words. Articles are to be written in British English (spelling and terminology); Full citation must be included (footnotes and endnotes may be used). Direct quotations should be identified by double quotation marks while quotes should have single quotation marks. Full articles should be at least 2000 words, but must not exceed 4000, unless with prior agreement with the Editor. Further details on presentation are included here below.
Footnotes or endnotes may be used and should be marked clearly in the text in numeric order after a point of punctuation (…possible to resist..1), and listed at the bottom/end of the relevant page/document.
CONFIRMATION OF ORIGINALITY
Plagiarism is globally recognised as a serious academic and professional offence. All intending contributors must provide written confirmation that article they have submitted for publication-:
1.Is the original article of the contributor submitting it ;
2.Has not been published elsewhere.
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Detailed Presentation Guidelines
The details provided hereunder are those generally used/followed by the Editorial team of Law Digest and as such, submitted articled may be amended in line with these presentation guidelines in an effort to achieve consistency in the presentation of articles in the journal. These guidelines are substantially adopted from and consistent with the University of Oxford presentation guidelines for legal journals. They may be used as a further guide by authors in the presentation of their articles
General Style
The editorial team will seek to ensure consistency in style and presentation of all articles and reserves the right to make any amendments to articles as may be deemed necessary to achieve such consistency.
The following are examples of the style that the editorial team will accept.
Case References
For example:
Pepper v Hart [1993] AC 593 (HL)
Or, if specific pages are referred to:
Ridge v Baldwin [1964] AC 40, 78.
Page ranges do not need to be given, only the first page.
American case citations may follow the American practice:
Brown v Board of Education, 347 US 483, 98 L Ed 873 (1954).
Note the punctuation, and that there are no full points between letters: thus the references are:
All ER WLR QB and so on.
European case references should follow the practice of the relevant jurisdiction.
If a case is referred to several times in the article, the author may introduce an abridged version of the case name eg. Three Rivers District Council and others (Respondents) v Governor and Company of the Bank of England [2004] UKHL 48) (“Three Rivers”). The author can then refer to the case as simply the Three Rivers in the rest of the article.
Articles
These should take the following form, using standard abbreviations for commonly known journals:
D Beatty, ‘The Canadian Charter of Rights: Lessons and Laments’ (1997) 60 MLR 481.
American references may follow American practice:
F Schauer, ‘Precedent’, 39 Stanford L Rev 571, 576 (1987).
Common acronyms for established journals will be accepted.
Books
References should adopt the following form:
JH Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (4th edn Butterworths 2002) 419
ACL Davies, Perspectives on Labour Law (Law in Context Series, CUP 2004)
An initial or initials may be supplied for an author instead of a first name.
Contributions to books
These should be cited to thus:
I Brownlie, ‘The Relation of Law and Power’ in Bin Cheng and ED Brown (eds), Contemporary Problems in International Law: Essays in Honour of Georg Schwarzenberger on his Eightieth Birthday (Stevens and Sons 1988)
Statutes
Statutes are to be cited in simple form or in line with the description/title given in the actual statute. Where the author cites different sections of (a) statute(s), there must be consistency eg. Section 4(1) – the author should not then cite another section as: s 5(2) but as Section 5(2).
Official Publications
These should be cited as provided in the publication concerned, or as that publication is normally cited, or as identical as possible to the title of the publication concerned.
Again it may be useful to use an shortened title eg. the “Pearson Report” in which case no further cross-reference is required.
Cross-references and cross-citations
These should normally take the following form both for books, articles and contributions to books:
See Dewar (n 32) 23.
If Dewar is referred to in the text after the first citation, the cross-reference will be:
Above (n 32) 23.
It is normally unnecessary to use op cit or loc cit. If the cross-reference is to the immediately preceding note, the reference will be:
Ibid 23.
Sub-divisions
The main headings should be centred and numbered 1, 2 and so on; first letters of main words should be in upper case.
The next level headings should be aligned on the left and be lettered A, B, C and so on; first letters of main words should be in upper case.
The next level should be aligned on the left and be numbered (i), (ii), (iii) and so on. Only the first letter of the heading should be in upper case.
Spelling
Spelling should conform to UK English (UK) in most cases with an ‘s’ instead of a ‘z’.
Quotations
Quotations within the text are to be italicised and enclosed within single quotation marks, and quotations within quotations are given double quotation marks. If quotations are three lines or more, they should be separated from the rest of the text, italicised and enclosed within double quotation marks.
Sections of statutes, where reproduced in the article should be separated from the rest of the text but need not be enclosed in any quotation marks nor italicised.
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. While our editorial team may be able to provide language editing services upon request, given our usual article load and time limitations, this may not always be possible. You may use specialist language editing companies. However, authors are liable for all costs associated with such services.
Colour
Any figures submitted to the journal in colour can be published in colour at no additional cost. Unless specifically requested by the author, figures/diagrams submitted in colour may be converted from colour to black and white. Authors should ensure that all photos, figures, tables and diagrams are submitted in high definition, and must have a resolution of at least 300 dots per inch at their final size. Figure captions must be suitably worded to apply to both the print and online versions of the article. If applicable, you will be notified of any additional costs and issued an invoice at the time of publication.
Note: Orders from the UK will be subject to the current UK VAT charge. For orders from elsewhere in the EU you or your institution should account for VAT by way of a reverse charge. Please provide us with your or your institution’s VAT number.
GUIDE FOR AUTHORS PREPARING ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS
DO
Enter text in the style and order of the journal.
Insert figure captions and tables at the end of the file.
Save any tables, diagrams, figures, graphs or illustrations electronically generated as separate files and not embedded into the text file.
Type references in the correct order and style of the journal.
Type unjustified, without hyphenation, except for compound words.
Type headings in the style of the journal.
Use the TAB key once for paragraph indents.
Where possible use Times for the text font and Symbol for the Greek and special characters.
Use the word processing formatting features to indicate Italic, Greek, Maths, Superscript and Subscriptcharacters.
Check the final copy of your paper carefully, as any spelling mistakes and errors will be faithfully translated into the typeset version.
DO NOT
Enter carriage returns to obtain spacing between lines, paragraphs, references etc. The space required is generated automatically by the typesetters.
Use double spaces after each sentence within a paragraph.
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