Editorial policy
Aimed at professionals active in the legal information community this topical journal provides invaluable information for all those involved in the provision of legal information in the academic and professional environments. Published quarterly, and with an extensive current awareness section, a regular international developments column and coverage of management issues, Legal Information Management is the international journal for legal information professionals everywhere.
We are happy to accept articles on the wide range of topics which might be of interest to BIALL members and those operating in allied fields. We attempt to have themes within each issue but not to the exclusion of other material. We look to the BIALL membership and those practising in legal information or associated fields to write on any matter which concerns them or of which they have experience.
Submissions
Submission of an article will be taken to imply that it is unpublished and not being considered for publication elsewhere. Upon acceptance of a paper, the author will be asked to sign a copyright licence (on certain conditions) to allow Cambridge University Press to mount the journal on Cambridge Core.
Contributors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce any material in which they do not hold copyright and for ensuring that the appropriate acknowledgments are included in the manuscript.
Manuscript preparation
Articles
The recommended minimum length for articles is about 2,500 words but we are happy to accept longer articles. It would be helpful if the article is divided into sections with the section headings appearing on separate lines.
The title page of the article should include the following information:
Contributor’s name
Contributor’s address
Brief abstract which should not be more than 100 words
Brief biography
Competing interest statements for all authors
Number of words
Details of address are needed so that we can send out the copyright licence form and a complimentary copy of the journal when it is published.
Competing interests
All authors must include a competing interest declaration in their title page. This declaration will be subject to editorial review and may be published in the article. 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 A is employed at organisation B. Author C is on the Board of company E and is a member of organisation F. Author G has received grants from company H.” If no competing interests exist, the declaration should state “Competing interests: The author(s) declare none”.
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the editor and any reviewers. We list a number of third-party services specialising in language editing and/or translation, and suggest that authors contact as appropriate: www.cambridge.org/core/services/authors/language-services
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge Core published journal.
Photographs
The journal is delighted to feature photographs of authors or of other subject matter relevant to the article in question. Please email digital versions of the photo to the editors.
Please indicate if there is any copyright in the photograph other than your own. Please supply a caption for every photograph.
Where the article includes illustrations, graphics, screen shots etc it would be helpful if these could be supplied in a separate electronic file.
Charges apply for all colour figures that appear in the print version of the journal. At the time of submission, contributors should clearly state whether their figures should appear in colour in the online version only, or whether they should appear in colour online and in the print version. There is no charge for including colour figures in the online version of the Journal but it must be clear that colour is needed to enhance the meaning of the figure, rather than simply being for aesthetic purposes. If you request colour figures in the printed version, you will be contacted by CCC-Rightslink who are acting on our behalf to collect Author Charges. Please follow their instructions in order to avoid any delay in the publication of your article.
Conference reports and book and product reviews
Conference and other reports and book and product reviews are normally shorter. However it is perfectly acceptable for longer conference reports, where issues raised are discussed in depth, to be submitted. In the case of book and product reviews about 1,000 words is the maximum.
Conference and other reports should be sent to the Editor.
Text conventions
Footnotes
Please use numbered foonotes in the text, with full details appearing at the end of the article. References to published literature can be cited in the text using the author-date style, for example Clinch (1998) followed by a,b… when two or more references to work by one author are given in the same year.
Examples are given as follows:
Clinch, Peter. (2001) FLAG project: survey results. Legal Information Management 1(2), 45-48
Gordon-Till, Jonathan. (1998a) Cameo on the world wide web. Managing Information 5(7), 53-55
Gordon-Till, Jonathan. (1998b) Discover: people information. Managing Information 5(10), 27-30
Harding, J. (1999) "Why Scotland? A major investor’s perspective" in Essential Scotland. Edinburgh, Agenda Publishing, 1999. 178-179
Moys, Elizabeth. (2001) Moys classification and thesaurus for legal materials. 4th ed. Munich, K.G. Saur.
Style
Quotations
If more than 60 words, they should be indented and set off from the text without quotation marks. Otherwise double quotation marks should be used except for quotations within quotations which should use single marks.
Underlining
Please do not underline, except where special emphasis is required.
Punctuation
All punctuation marks should be outside closing quotation marks.
Capitals
Please use sparingly.
Abbreviations
No full points should be used with abbreviations consisting of initials (ACAS, USA) except in references to judges, law reports, journals (C.L.J., C.A.).
Dates
Use the style: 2 July 1999; 1998-89; 1990s
Numerals
Numbers below ten should be spelt out.
Spelling
Please use English spelling: organisation not organization; labour not labor.
Italics
The following should be italicised:
Case names: Edwards v Brown; book titles where quoted in the text: Halsbury’s Laws of England.
Proofs
Proofs will not normally be sent to contributors. However where there are problems with length or the Editor feels that considerable amendments are necessary, then authors may be contacted for editing advice. Authors may request copies of first proofs.
Complimentary copies
Authors will receive a PDF version of their article.
Open Access
Please visit www.cambridge.org/core/services/open-access-policies for information on our open access policies, compliance with major funding bodies, and guidelines on depositing your manuscript in an institutional repository.
Contact
In case of uncertainty or doubt, or where you are unsure about the viability of an article or topic, feel free to contact Mike Breslin or Jas Breslin at limeditor@biall.org.uk
Note: Full journal text is made available on: Westlaw
Last updated 17th May 2023
Policy on prior publication
When authors submit manuscripts to this journal, these manuscripts should not be under consideration, accepted for publication or in press within a different journal, book or similar entity, unless explicit permission or agreement has been sought from all entities involved. However, deposition of a preprint on the author’s personal website, in an institutional repository, or in a preprint archive shall not be viewed as prior or duplicate publication. Authors should follow the Cambridge University Press Preprint Policy regarding preprint archives and maintaining the version of record.
English language editing services
Authors, particularly those whose first language is not English, may wish to have their English-language manuscripts checked by a native speaker before submission. This step is optional, but may help to ensure that the academic content of the paper is fully understood by the Editor and any reviewers.
In order to help prospective authors to prepare for submission and to reach their publication goals, Cambridge University Press offers a range of high-quality manuscript preparation services, including language editing. You can find out more on our language services page.
Please note that the use of any of these services is voluntary, and at the author's own expense. Use of these services does not guarantee that the manuscript will be accepted for publication, nor does it restrict the author to submitting to a Cambridge-published journal.
Authorship and contributorship
All authors listed on any papers submitted to this journal must be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. For further details on this journal’s authorship policy, please see this journal's publishing ethics policies.
Author affiliations
Author affiliations should represent the institution(s) at which the research presented was conducted and/or supported and/or approved. For non-research content, any affiliations should represent the institution(s) with which each author is currently affiliated.
For more information, please see our author affiliation policy and author affiliation FAQs.
Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools
We acknowledge the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in the research and writing processes. To ensure transparency, we expect any such use to be declared and described fully to readers, and to comply with our plagiarism policy and best practices regarding citation and acknowledgements. We do not consider artificial intelligence (AI) tools to meet the accountability requirements of authorship, and therefore generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and similar should not be listed as an author on any submitted content.
In particular, any use of an AI tool:
- to generate images within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, and declared clearly in the image caption(s)
- to generate text within the manuscript should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, include appropriate and valid references and citations, and be declared in the manuscript’s Acknowledgements.
- to analyse or extract insights from data or other materials, for example through the use of text and data mining, should be accompanied by a full description of the process used, including details and appropriate citation of any dataset(s) or other material analysed in all relevant and appropriate areas of the manuscript
- must not present ideas, words, data, or other material produced by third parties without appropriate acknowledgement or permission
Descriptions of AI processes used should include at minimum the version of the tool/algorithm used, where it can be accessed, any proprietary information relevant to the use of the tool/algorithm, any modifications of the tool made by the researchers (such as the addition of data to a tool’s public corpus), and the date(s) it was used for the purpose(s) described. Any relevant competing interests or potential bias arising as a consequence of the tool/algorithm’s use should be transparently declared and may be discussed in the article.
Supplementary materials
Material that is not essential to understanding or supporting a manuscript, but which may nonetheless be relevant or interesting to readers, may be submitted as supplementary materials. Supplementary materials will be published online alongside your article, but will not be published in the pages of the journal. Types of supplementary materials may include, but are not limited to, appendices, additional tables or figures, datasets, videos, and sound files.
Supplementary materials will be published with the same metadata as your parent article, and are considered a formal part of the academic record, so cannot be retracted or modified other than via our article correction processes. Supplementary materials will not be typeset or copyedited, so should be supplied exactly as they are to appear online. Please make sure you are familiar with our detailed guidance on supplementary materials prior to submission.
Where relevant we encourage authors to publish additional qualitative or quantitative research outputs in an appropriate repository, and cite these in manuscripts.
Author Hub
You can find guides for many aspects of publishing with Cambridge at Author Hub, our suite of resources for Cambridge authors.