Submissions

Author Guidelines

This online-only open access journal uses its own submission system found at SASOpenJournals.

The instructions below are specifically directed at authors who wish to submit a manuscript to The Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth (JHRC).  For general information about SASOpenJournals please click here.

Please read the below thoroughly before making a submission. Complete guidelines for preparing and submitting your manuscript to this journal are provided below.

Manuscripts should be submitted to HRC@sas.ac.uk.

Article types

The Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth is a peer-reviewed journal accepting submission on a vast range of issues relating to human rights in the Commonwealth of Nations including, but not limited to: human rights and the law, democracy and governance, development, poverty, conflict, transitional justice, climate change, the ecological crisis, colonialism and imperialism, equality and discrimination, ethnicity, religion, gender and women’s human rights, children, class, corporate accountability, refugees, migration, minorities and indigenous peoples.

The journal also publishes Commonwealth-related comparative human rights evaluations and country reports. To promote scholarly and practitioner debate the editors will also publish opinion pieces and discussion papers from renowned writers, activists and experts in the fields of Commonwealth Studies and Human Rights. Commentaries, reflections, field notes, thematic essays and review articles are also welcome.

The Journal of Human Rights in the Commonwealth considers all manuscripts on the strict condition that they have been submitted only to the JHRC, that they have not been published already, nor are they under consideration for publication or in press elsewhere. Contributions to the JHRC must report original research and will be subjected to review by referees at the discretion of the Editorial Office.

Manuscript preparation

1. General guidelines

• Manuscripts must be submitted in Word.  OpenOffice manuscripts may also be submitted if this is not possible.
• Papers are accepted in English. British English spelling and punctuation is preferred. Please use single quotation marks, except where ‘a quotation is “within” a quotation’.
• There is no standard length for articles but 8000-11,000 words (including notes and references) is a useful target. Authors should include a word count with their manuscript.
• Manuscripts should be compiled in the following order: title page; abstract; keywords; main text (with footnote references); acknowledgments; appendixes (as appropriate); table(s) with caption(s) (on individual pages); figure caption(s) (as a list).
• Abstracts of at least 100 words are required for all papers submitted.
• Each paper should have 5 to 6 keywords.  Choose relevant keywords that will enhance the article’s discoverability online.
• Section headings should be concise and numbered sequentially, using a decimal system for subsections.
• All the authors of a paper should include their full names, affiliations, postal addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses on the cover page of the manuscript. One author should be identified as the corresponding author. The affiliations of all named co-authors should be the affiliation where the research was conducted. If any of the named co-authors moves affiliation during the peer review process, the new affiliation can be given as a footnote. Please note that no changes to affiliation can be made after the article is accepted.
• Please supply a short biographical note (about 50 words) for each author.
• For all manuscripts non-discriminatory language is mandatory. Sexist or racist terms should not be used.
• When using a word which is or is asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark, authors must use the symbol ® or TM.

2. Style guidelines

• The journal uses Chicago referencing style with footnotes, a guide to which can be found here.
• Please use British spelling (e.g. colour, organise) and punctuation. Use single quotation marks (with double within if needed).
• If you have any questions about references or formatting your article, please contact HRC@sas.ac.uk (please mention ‘JHRC’ in the subject line).

3. Figures & Images

It is in the author's interest to provide the highest quality figure format possible for possible print purposes; although the journal is predominantly online there will be print special issues and yearbooks. Please be sure that all imported scanned material is scanned at the appropriate resolution: 1200 dpi for line art, 600 dpi for grayscale and 300 dpi for colour.

• Figures must be saved separate to the text file. Please do not embed figures in the text file.
• Files should be saved as one of the following formats: TIFF, JPG or EPS.
• All figures must be numbered in the order in which they appear in the paper (e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2). In multi-part figures, each part should be labelled (e.g. Figure 1(a), Figure 1(b)).
• Figure captions must be saved separately, as part of the file containing the complete text of the paper, and numbered correspondingly.
• The filename for a graphic should be descriptive of the graphic, e.g. Figure1, Figure2a.

4. Publication charges

There are no charges to publish your article in this journal.  All articles are available free online.

5. Reproduction of copyright material

As an author, you are required to secure permission to reproduce any proprietary text, illustration, table, or other material, including data, audio, video, film stills, and screenshots, and any supplemental material you propose to submit. This applies to direct reproduction as well as 'derivative reproduction' (where you have created a new figure or table which derives substantially from a copyrighted source). The reproduction of short extracts of text, excluding poetry and song lyrics, for the purposes of criticism may be possible without formal permission on the basis that the quotation is reproduced accurately and full attribution is given.

6. Supplementary online material

Authors are welcome to submit animations, movie files, sound files or any additional information for online publication.

7. Manuscript submission

Manuscripts should be submitted to HRC@sas.ac.uk.

Manuscripts must be submitted in Word.

8. Copyright and authors’ rights

Those who contribute items to the Journal retain author copyright in their work but are asked to grant two licences. One is a licence to the Human Rights Consortium, School of Advanced Study of the University of London, enabling us to reproduce the item in digital form, so that it can be made available for access online in the open journal system and repository and website. The terms of the licence which you are asked to grant to the University for this purpose are as follows:

'I grant to the University of London the irrevocable, non-exclusive royalty-free right to reproduce, distribute, display, and perform this work in any format including electronic formats throughout the world for educational, research, and scientific non-profit uses during the full term of copyright including renewals and extensions.'

The other licence is for the benefit of those who wish to make use of items published online in Journal and stored in the e-repository. For this purpose we use a Creative Commons licence (http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/) allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to your entry in the Journal and/or SAS-SPACE, but they can't change them in any way or use them commercially.  This is called a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

9. Free article access

All articles are freely available online, to read, download and print.  The author is encouraged to submit them elsewhere on repositories

10. Printed journal copies

The journal will occasionally collate papers into a special themed issue or yearbooks and publish the articles in a printed format.  Authors will receive a printed copy provided address details on their JHRC online account are kept up-to-date.  The journal will inform authors when their article is going to be printed.