Author Guidelines

The University of Jos Law Journal (UJLJ) is published by the Faculty of Law, University of Jos. It publishes well-researched, original papers that address contemporary legal, political, economic and social issues in Nigeria and beyond.

We consider:

• Research articles — doctrinal, comparative, jurisprudential or socio-legal studies that state a problem, analyse the law critically and reach findings and recommendations.
• Case reviews, statute reviews and short commentaries on a recent decision, enactment, bill or development in the law.
• Book reviews of recent legal texts.

Manuscripts must be original, written in English, and neither published nor under consideration anywhere else. Before you write, read the Aims & Scope page: it sets out the areas of law we cover and, just as importantly, the kinds of manuscript we return without review.

UJLJ follows the format for journal articles in the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT) Uniform Format and Citation Guide for Legal Research Writing in Nigeria. Manuscripts that do not follow these requirements are returned for correction before any assessment begins.

Prepare the file for blind review. UJLJ reviews double-blind, so the manuscript file must not carry the authors' names, degrees, posts, institutional addresses, email addresses, phone numbers or any acknowledgement that identifies you. Enter those details on the submission form instead, where they reach the editors but never the reviewers. The author footnote that the NALT format places on the first page is added when an accepted paper is prepared for publication, not before review. If you cite your own earlier work, refer to it in the third person, as you would anyone else's.

Proofread before you submit. Peer review tests the accuracy and relevance of a paper; it is not a proofreading service, and responsibility for the language and the accuracy of every citation remains with the author.

An article runs in this order: title, abstract, keywords, introduction, the body of the paper, a short summary of findings, practicable recommendations that address the problems the research identified, and a succinct conclusion drawn from those findings.

Headings

• Divide the paper into not more than six main sections, numbered in Arabic numerals, typed in capital letters and set flush with the left margin: 1. INTRODUCTION, 2. CONCEPTUAL CLARIFICATION and so on to 6. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS.
• Number sub-headings by decimal — 3.1, 3.2 — and type them in lower case with a capital letter for each major word. There is no limit to the number of sub-headings.
• Any further division is marked i, ii, iii or a, b, c.

Quotations

• Quote the exact words of the original. Mark an error in the original with (sic), words you have left out with an ellipsis, and emphasis of your own with (emphasis added).
• Short quotations — fewer than three lines or 40 words — stay in the text, inside single quotation marks.
• Long quotations are set as a block, indented from both sides and single-spaced, without quotation marks, with a line space before and after.
• Give the source of every quotation in a footnote, with the page on which the words appear.

Every source is cited in a footnote, marked in the text by a superscript Arabic numeral that Word generates automatically and that runs in one series through the paper. In-text author-date citation (APA, Harvard, MLA) and endnotes are not accepted, and an article needs no separate bibliography. The full rules are in Part Three of the NALT Uniform Format and Citation Guide; the points authors most often miss are these.

• Punctuate lightly. No full stops in abbreviations: LFN, NWLR, FWLR, SAN. Separate several sources in one footnote with semicolons.
• Cases. Names of the parties in italics, separated by an unpunctuated v; then the year, volume, part and first page as the law report itself prints them. Only the names appear in the text; the reference goes in the footnote. After the first full citation a short form (Ekoebor's case) may be used, consistently.
• The Constitution and statutes. Cite the Constitution in full, with ‘as amended’, the first time; then CFRN 1999 (as amended) or ‘the Constitution’. Cite statutes by their short title and year, with the chapter number under which they are codified or their Act number. Write ‘section’ in the text; keep s, ss, pt, para and sch for footnotes.
• Authors. In a footnote the first name or initials come before the surname, exactly as printed in the work and without titles such as Prof, Dr, Hon Justice or SAN. Two or three authors are joined by ‘and’; for more than three, name the first and add ‘and others’.
• Titles. Books, journals and newspapers in italics; articles, chapters and papers in single quotation marks. Capitalise the major words. Put a colon between a title and its subtitle. Page numbers stand alone, without p or pp.
• Repeated sources. Use ibid only when the footnote immediately before cites the same source. Otherwise cross-refer to the footnote of first citation — Alubo (n 4) 17. Supra, infra, ante, id, op cit, loc cit, passim and et seq are not used.
• Online sources. Where a work exists in print, cite the print version. A source found only online ends with its web address in angle brackets and the date you last opened it.

Specimen footnotes

All submissions are made through this website. Create an author account, or sign in to the one you have, and use Submit Manuscript.

1. Enter the title, abstract, keywords and the details of every author, in the order they should appear.
2. Upload the manuscript as a single .docx file, prepared for blind review.
3. Submit, and pay the processing fee (see Fees and Charges).

You will receive an acknowledgement by email, and can follow the manuscript through every stage from your account. Corresponding authors should keep their email address current: all editorial correspondence goes through it.

Questions about a submission may be sent to the editorial office at kwedef@unijos.edu.ng or on +234 803 587 1926. Manuscripts themselves are only accepted through the website.

UJLJ operates double-blind peer review: reviewers are not told who the authors are, and authors are not told who the reviewers are.

1. Editorial screening. The editors check that the manuscript is in scope, original and prepared in the NALT house style. Work that falls outside the journal's remit, or that does not follow the format and citation rules, is returned at this stage rather than sent out.
2. Review. Manuscripts that pass screening go to independent reviewers with expertise in the area of law concerned. They assess originality and relevance, methodological soundness, depth of legal analysis, citation compliance and clarity of expression.
3. Decision. The editors weigh the reports and decide: accept, accept with minor corrections, revise and resubmit, or reject. The reviewers' comments are sent to you.
4. Revision. Revised manuscripts are returned through your account with a note of how each point was addressed. Substantial revisions may go back to the reviewers.

Editorial decisions rest on the quality, originality and relevance of the work. Payment of any fee has no bearing on them.

UJLJ is free to read: there is no subscription or paywall. Publication is funded by author charges, levied in two stages.

• The processing fee is not refundable, whatever the outcome. It pays for the assessment itself, which is carried out whether the manuscript is accepted or rejected.
• It does not purchase publication. Paying entitles a manuscript to be considered, not to be accepted. The publication fee is requested only after a manuscript has passed peer review and been formally accepted.

Both payments are made online from the Payments page of your author account, which records the transaction against your submission and issues a receipt. Treat any request to send money to account details supplied privately, by an individual or in an email, as fraudulent, and report it to the editorial office.

Submitting to UJLJ commits you to the following.

• Originality. The manuscript is your own work, has not been published before, and is not under consideration elsewhere. Text taken from another source without quotation and a footnote — including from your own earlier papers — is plagiarism and is grounds for rejection.
• Accuracy of authorities. Every case, statute and other source you cite exists, says what you report it to say, and has been read by you. Citing an authority that does not exist, or misstating one, is treated as seriously as fabricating data.
• Authorship. Everyone listed made a real contribution to the work, and everyone who did is listed. Authors are named at submission; adding or removing one later requires the written agreement of all of them.
• Empirical work. Interviews, questionnaires and field data are real, reported accurately, and gathered with the consent of the people concerned.
• Conflicts of interest. Disclose any funding, employment, brief or relationship that could be seen to influence the work, including your own involvement as counsel or party in a case you discuss.
• Correction. If you discover a significant error after publication, tell the editors; we will publish a correction or, where necessary, a retraction.

Copyright. On acceptance, copyright in the article passes to the Faculty of Law, University of Jos, as publisher; you confirm your agreement to this when you submit. Published articles are free to read and download on this site. You may use your own article in your teaching and further research, include it in a thesis, and deposit it in your institution's repository, citing the journal, volume, number, year and pages. Any other reproduction requires the publisher's written permission.

The views expressed in an article are those of its author and not of the Editorial Board or the Faculty of Law.

Concerns about the conduct of a review, or an allegation of misconduct, may be sent to the Editor-in-Chief at kwedef@unijos.edu.ng and will be considered by the editors.