All pieces published in Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance must follow these style instructions.

Given the diversity of disciplines covered, authors may submit their paper initially in any suitably polished, fully referenced and clearly organised format; if the article is accepted for publication, bringing it into line with the journal’s style will remain the author’s responsibility and will need to be completed before the paper can enter production.

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Basic text conventions

• The journal publishes in English and all contributions should be written in English.
• Text should be formatted as double-spaced throughout.
• Pages should be numbered consecutively.
• Articles should be fully anonymised for peer review.
• Headings should be styled as followed:
  • 1. First Level Heading (bold)
  • 1.1 Second Level Heading (bold italics
  • 1.1.1 Third Level Heading (italics)

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Writing style

Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance seeks to engage multiple subject disciplines and promote dialogue between policymakers, legal practitioners and business professionals as well as academics. The journal therefore encourages authors to use an accessible writing style.

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Abstracts

This journal seeks to engage with readers from a wide range of disciplines and so all authors must ensure that their abstract is written in plain English. The abstract must summarise the purpose of the paper, be no more than 300 words in length and be accessible to a reader that isn’t necessarily an expert in your field. Please avoid jargon or specialised terms and note that abstracts should not include sub-headings, abbreviations that are undefined or references. Search engines typically only search the title and abstract of an article so make sure that key phrases which describe the article topic also feature prominently in your abstract.

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General journal style rules

• Author affiliations should adhere to the following conventions:
  • Department/school, university/institution, city, state/province, country Abbreviate USA and UK.
  • Use two-letter postal codes for state/province names.
  • If an author has multiple affiliations or if there are multiple authors, use superscript Arabic numerals to differentiate affiliations.
• Abstract: no more than 300 words (see detailed instructions above).
• Keywords: no more than six.
• Commas: "et al.", "etc.", "i.e.", followed by commas if the sentence continues. Don't use "cf.
• Spelling: either American- or British-English spelling can be used, but either should be used consistently throughout the paper.
• Quotes: “double” quotation marks should be used, with periods and commas inside marks and ‘single’ quotation marks for quotes within quotes. Quotes of more than fifty words should be set as extracts with no quotation marks.
• Order of parentheses in text: ([]).
• Abbreviations and acronyms: authors should spell out in full any abbreviations used in their manuscripts the first time that they use it.
• Measurements and units: percents should always be expressed as numerals, even when they are less than 10. However, you should spell out percents if they begin a sentence. For example: Sales increased 5 percent. Fifty percent of this was due to Aitha. Only use the percent symbol (%) in figures and tables and parentheses.
• Numbers: numbers less than 10 should be spelt out. Numerals should be used for numbers of 10 or larger. Exceptions to this rule:
  • Numbers of years are always spelled, as in “two to three years.”
  • Numbers beginning a sentence are always spelled out, as in “Fifteen different models were used…”
  • When a number is spelled out according to one of the rules above and is associated with another number, that second number is also spelled out in order to maintain a consistent appearance. For example, “Fifteen of the twenty-two plans…” instead of “Fifteen of the 22 plans…”
• Punctuation: place punctuation inside the quote if the quote is mid-sentence. For example: “You may confirm this,” said Smith (2008).
• Word count: The indicative word counts for the various article types accepted by the journal are shown in the table here. Word counts exclude references.

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References and footnotes

Cambridge Forum on AI: Law and Governance uses APA style just for referencing. APA style has been selected for its wide use across the social sciences as well as by computer scientists.

APA Style requires you to use APA in-text citations, not footnotes, to cite sources. Full publication details should then appear in the reference list. With APA you can use APA footnotes sparingly for two purposes: giving additional information; or providing copyright attribution.

General points

• Every source cited must appear in the references.
• References consist only of sources cited in the text.

Footnote formatting

• Footnotes should be used sparingly and only for key additional information or copyright attribution (see above).
• They should be numbered consecutively using Arabic numbers.
• Footnote numbers at the ends of sentences after the punctuation.
• There should be no internal cross-referencing included in the footnotes.
• Check that all references in footnotes appear in the reference list.

In-text citation formatting

• For ‘narrative citations’ (i.e. where the author’s name is part of the sentence) just the year of publication should appear in parentheses directly after the name, for example “Walters (2003) wrote that most people tend to follow the path of least resistance”.
• For other citations (referred to as ‘parenthetical citations’) all information is included within the parentheses and the last name and publication year are included and separated by a comma, for example “Most people tend to follow the path of least resistance (Walters, 2003).” This type of citation can appear within or at the end of a sentence.
• Use "and" when citing multiple authors in the text but use “&” within the parentheses i.e. (Walters & Brown, 2003).
• Page or paragraph numbers should be included in the case of an exact quote i.e. (Walters & Brown, 2003, p.40).
• For works with three or more authors, cite the first author’s name followed by “et al.”.
• Use semicolons to separate works by different authors and commas to separate works by the same author i.e. to cite multiple authors, use (Aitha, 2008; Smith 2005) but to cite the same author with multiple works use (Aitha 2006, 2008).
• Order references alphabetically within strings by author, and chronologically when citing works by the same author.
• Distinguish between works published by the same author in the same year by adding a lower case letter to the publication year (a, b, c, etc.) in the order in which the references appear in the text. For works published in the same year with the same lead author, but different groups of co-authors, list either the complete list of authors, or enough co-authors to identify the groups (but do not add letters, since these are not identically authored references).

Reference list formatting

• Arrange references alphabetically by author surname, with all the authors listed. List author names, in bold, in “last name first name” format, with the first names given in initials with full points.
• Multiple authors separated by commas and use “&”.
• All book and journal titles must be italicised.
• Journal titles, but not book titles, have all major words begin with upper case.
• Journal volume numbers in italics, followed by an optional issue number in parentheses (with no space before it) and a comma.
• Page numbers are required for everything.
• Examples:

Journal article: Nevin, A. (1990). The changing of teacher education special education. Teacher Education and Special Education: The Journal of the Teacher Education Division of the Council for Exceptional Children, 13(3-4), 147-148.

Journal article with DOI, advance online publication: Von Ledebur, S. C. (2007). Optimizing knowledge transfer by new employees in companies. Knowledge Management Research & Practice. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1 057/palgrave.kmrp.8500141.

Book: Sapolsky, R. M. (2017). Behave: The biology of humans at our best and worst. Penguin Books.

Book chapter: Dillard, J. P. (2020). Currents in the study of persuasion. In M. B. Oliver, A. A. Raney, & J. Bryant (Eds.), Media effects: Advances in theory and research (4th ed., pp. 115–129). Routledge.

Newspaper: Harlan, C. (2013, April 2). North Korea vows to restart shuttered nuclear reactor that can make bomb-grade plutonium. The Washington Post, A1, A4.

Website: Simmons, B. (2015, January 9). The tale of two Flaccos. Retrieved from http://grantland.com/the-trian...

Case report: Douglas v Hello! Magazine (2001) 2 WLR 992.

For legal references not covered by APA please follow Bluebook style.

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Figures, tables and graphics

All figures, tables and graphics must be called out in the body of the text, in sequential order. All titles and notes to figures and tables must be self-explanatory and sourced. Non-technical terms are preferred, and any technical terms should be defined if necessary in a note.

Figures may have sources, and tables must have sources.

Table column and row headings should be written in sentence case.

Full information on how to prepare and supply tables, figures and graphics can be found here and should be followed with care.

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Permissions

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material, including illustrations, in which they do not hold the copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgements are included in their paper. In quoting from copyright material, contributors should keep in mind that the rule of thumb for ‘fair use’ confines direct quotation to a maximum of 200 words. In obtaining permissions, authors must seek permission to reproduce material not within the author’s copyright for dissemination worldwide in electronic publication. It should be possible in most cases to obtain permissions for use of copyright material in the context of an academic journal article, but authors in need of advice are encouraged to email cfl@cambridge.org

Please note that, if your paper is accepted for publication, we will not be able to move your manuscript into Production until all permissions have been secured.

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Acknowledgements

Authors can use this section to acknowledge and thank colleagues, institutions, workshop organisers, family members, etc. that have helped with the research and/or writing process.  It is important that any type of funding information or financial support is listed under ‘Financial Support’ rather than Acknowledgements so that it can be recorded separately (see here).

We are aware that authors sometimes receive assistance from technical writers, language editors, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication. Such assistance must be noted in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section, along with a declaration that the author(s) are entirely responsible for the scientific content of the paper and that the paper adheres to the journal’s authorship policy. Failure to acknowledge assistance from technical writers, language editors, AI tools and/or writing agencies in drafting manuscripts for publication in the cover letter and in the Acknowledgements section may lead to disqualification of the paper. Examples of how to acknowledge assistance in drafting manuscripts:

• "The author(s) thank [name and qualifications] of [company, city, country] for providing [medical/technical/language] writing support/editorial support [specify and/or expand as appropriate], which was funded by [sponsor, city, country]."
• "The author(s) made use of [AI system/tool] to assist with the drafting of this  article. [AI version details] was accessed/obtained from [source details] and used with/without modification [specify and/or expand as appropriate] on [date(s)]."

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Competing Interests

All authors must include a competing interest declaration during the submission process. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and will be published in the article. If your paper is accepted, you will be asked to provide a 'title page' to accompany the final version of your paper, which must include a competing interest declaration as well as a funding statement. Please see the section on Disclosure of interests and funding here for more information.

Competing interests are situations that could be perceived to exert an undue influence on the content or publication of an author’s work. They may include, but are not limited to, financial, professional, contractual or personal relationships or situations.

If the manuscript has multiple authors, the author submitting must include competing interest declarations relevant to all contributing authors.

Example wording for a declaration is as follows: “Competing interests: Author 1 is employed at organisation A, Author 2 is on the Board of company B and is a member of organisation C. Author 3 has received grants from company D.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.