Issues in Legal Scholarship: Policies

Policies for Issues in Legal Scholarship

Authors and Submissions: The journal currently accepts only invited submissions. Scholars who would like to propose a new symposium or contribute to an ongoing symposium should contact an editor. The Article Submission Agreement applies to all authors.

Philosophy of Issues in Legal Scholarship

For more information, please see Issues in Legal Scholarship Aims and Scope page.

If the article is accepted into one of Issues in Legal Scholarship, the author will be asked to send an electronic version of the article that conforms to bepress's formatting requirements. The author will also be required to agree to the publication agreement. If the author agrees, then the article will be published shortly after receipt of the final electronic version. Should the author not agree, then the article is considered withdrawn.

If the author is invited to revise and resubmit, then whether and when this is done is up to the author. The author can, at this stage, withdraw the article if he or she wishes.

Who Can Submit?

Currently all submissions must be invited. The author must own the copyright to the work being submitted or have authorization from the copyright owner or owners to submit the article. Authors are the initial owners of the copyrights to their works (an exception in the non-academic world to this might exist if the authors have, as a condition of employment, agreed to transfer copyright to their employer).

General Submission Rules

Submitted articles cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in an archival journal or book (print or electronic). Please note: "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. In addition, by submitting material to Issues in Legal Scholarship, the author is stipulating that the material is not currently under review at another journal (electronic or print) and that he or she will not submit the material to another journal (electronic or print) until the completion of the editorial decision process at Issues in Legal Scholarship.

Formatting Requirements

Issues in Legal Scholarship have no general rules about the formatting of articles upon initial submission, except that they follow the Bluebook uniform citation rules.

Although bepress can provide limited technical support, it is ultimately the responsibility of the author to produce an electronic version of the article as a high-quality PDF (Adobe's Portable Document Format) file, or a Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, or RTF file that bepress can convert to a PDF file. It is understood that the current state of technology of Adobe's Portable Document Format ("PDF") is such that there are no, and can be no, guarantees that documents in PDF will work perfectly with all possible hardware and software configurations that readers may have.

Copyright and Open Access Permissions

As further described in our submission agreement, in consideration for publication of the article, the authors assign to The Berkeley Electronic Press all copyright in the article, subject to the expansive personal-use exceptions described below.

Attribution and Usage Policies

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, in any medium as permitted by a personal-use exemption or by written agreement of The Berkeley Electronic Press, requires credit to The Berkeley Electronic Press as copyright holder (e.g., The Berkeley Electronic Press © 2008).

Personal-use Exceptions

The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) and do not require further permission from The Berkeley Electronic Press provided the author does not alter the format or content of the articles, including the copyright notification:

Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website, provided that the website is non-commercial;
Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment (e.g., a Phrenology professor at the University of Southern North Dakota can have her article appear in the University of Southern North Dakota's Department of Phrenology online publication series);
Authors are allowed to deposit their articles to PubMedCentral and UKPubMedCentral twelve months after publication, which satisfies the open access mandates of all major government and foundation research grants. Bepress deposits the content of some journals automatically on behalf of authors; see http://www.bepress.com/ils/about.html to see if this applies in your case.
Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author; and
Storage and back-up of the article on the author's computer(s) and digital media (e.g., diskettes, back-up servers, Zip disks, etc.), provided that the article stored on these computers and media is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s).

People seeking an exception, or who have questions about use, should contact The Berkeley Electronic Press at .

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General Terms and Conditions of Use

Users of the bepress website and/or software agree not to misuse the bepress service or software in any way.

The failure of bepress to exercise or enforce any right or provision in the policies or the Submission Agreement does not constitute a waiver of such right or provision. If any term of the Submission Agreement or these policies is found to be invalid, the parties nevertheless agree that the court should endeavor to give effect to the parties' intentions as reflected in the provision, and the other provisions of the Submission Agreement and these policies remain in full force and effect. These policies and the Submission Agreement constitute the entire agreement between bepress and the Author(s) regarding submission of the Article.