Author Guidelines
Submission Guidelines
Length Limitations
JLAS strongly prefers articles under 25,000 words in length — the equivalent of 50 law review pages — including text and footnotes. Length in excess of 30,000 words — the equivalent of 60 law review pages — will weigh significantly against selection.
Anonymous Review
To facilitate our anonymous review process, please confine your name, affiliation, biographical information, and acknowledgments to a separate cover page. Please include the manuscript’s title on the first text page.
Please check to see if the following steps have been taken with regard to the text and the file properties:
- The authors of the document have deleted their names from the text, with "Author" and year used in the references and footnotes, instead of the authors' name, article title, etc.
- With Microsoft Office documents, author identification should also be removed from the properties for the file (see under File in Word), by clicking on the following, beginning with File on the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options with a Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties on save > Save.
- With PDFs, the authors' names should also be removed from Document Properties found under File on Adobe Acrobat's main menu.
Citation Format
When preparing manuscripts for submission, JLAS authors must follow the guidelines of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th Edition) or 2010 Harvard Citator/Bluebook (19th Edition). Please use footnotes rather than endnotes All manuscripts must be submitted in English and double-spaced in 12-point Times New Roman font, with one-inch margins on all sides of the page throughout.
Expedited Review
If you would like to request an expedited review of your submission, please refer to the unique link provided to you in your Submission Confirmation Email. If you did not receive this message, be sure to check your Spam / Junk folder.
Seven-Day Offer Window
Authors of accepted works have seven days to accept publication offers.
Preference for Exclusivity
We strongly recommend that you submit your manuscript to us exclusively. However, non-exclusive submissions are permitted and will receive the same review process as exclusive submissions. As described below, our review process is lengthy; unlike many law journals, JLAS referees all manuscripts and those that are not desk rejected undergo a rigorous double-blind peer review. As a result, we are often unable to make quick decisions when faced with multiple offers from other journals.
Authors who choose to give us an exclusive submission should indicate in our electronic submission system the date that they expect to send the manuscript to other journals. We apply the same standards of review to all submissions, but submitting exclusively makes it more likely that we will have time to put the manuscript through all of stages of our review process.
Review Process
The Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport carefully considers all manuscripts that it receives. Our selection process has many steps: each manuscript is reviewed anonymously, two editors review every submission, and many manuscirpts go through double-blind peer review. The review process takes, at minimum, 30 days from the point of submission. The Editorial Board of JLAS prides itself on fast turnarounds, but authors should anticipate a review process that may exceed 30 days. At any point, authors are encouraged to contact the Editor or Associate Editor with inquiries on the status of their manuscript
Although we make every effort to honor requests for expedited review, we do not omit any of our review stages in response to such requests. When requesting an expedited review, please understand that our selection process takes time.
There is no best time to submit a manuscript to the JLAS. We will never reject an article for lack of space; rather, we will hold it over for consideration by the next volume.
We notify authors of our decisions by email. We normally do not inform authors of the status of their manuscripts other than through email. As a matter of policy, we do not discuss the reasons for our publication decisions.
Preference for Theoretical and Practical Contributions
The Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport is the preeminent peer-reviewed sport law journal. As such, JLAS gives preference for publication to manuscripts that advance existing knowledge on sport law issues. While JLAS will review for consideration manuscripts that focus on teaching sport law and book reviews, preference will always be given to articles that include within them significant theoretical and practical information that extends the extant sport law literature in new and exciting directions.
