1. Journal Profile and Types of Submissions

Весник правне историје / Herald of Legal History is an international academic student journal dedicated to the study of legal history of all countries and periods. The journal is published by the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law. It has two issues per year, in a limited number of physical copies and as an open access e-journal

Both graduate and postgraduate students of law, as well as of other social sciences and humanities, are eligible to submit papers for the journal. Submissions by authors who no longer have student status are also acceptable, as long as they possessed it during their research or writing.

Submissions are accepted in Serbian and English.

We accept the following types of submissions:

1. Academic articles written by students; in case of co-authored papers, all authors must have student status at an institution of higher education. We encourage both papers dealing with individual legal systems and those taking a comparative approach.
   
   
2. Book reviews written by students; both recent and older works can be reviewed, but the approach must be adjusted accordingly. If an older book that was later re-issued is reviewed, the reviewer must submit full bibliographical information regarding both the first edition of the work and the one that was used for the review.
   
   
3. Translations of academic articles or primary sources from Serbian to English or vice versa, or from any other language to either of these two, done by students. If a translation of the text into the language in question already exists, the translation has to be significantly better and/or more modern. Along with the translation, the translator must also submit the author’s or another copyright holder’s consent (or proof that the text is in public domain, i.e. free to use), as well as the original text. Whenever possible, the original and the translation will be published side by side.
   
   
4. Interviews with renowned scholars in the field of legal history, conducted by students, on academic subjects. Along with the text of the interview, the interviewer must submit proof of the interviewee’s authorization and consent to the publication of the interview (e.g. email communication or a scan of a signed statement of consent).
   
   
5. Event-related texts – conference reports, necrologues etc.

We encourage students intending to submit translations or interviews to inform the Editorial Board of their intentions in advance, and to inquire whether the text to be translated or the scholar to be interviewed fit in with the journal’s profile. An example of the translation (1-2 pages long) can also be provided, in order for the overall quality of the translation to be assessed in advance.

Papers that were already published elsewhere cannot be submitted. If a work in progress version has been made available online, once the paper has been published, it should be removed or replaced with a link to the paper on the HLH website.

All submissions will be evaluated by two external reviewers. The peer review is double blind. Articles and book reviews will be evaluated by experts in the relevant field of legal history, while translations will be reviewed by one expert in the field of the translated text, and one philologist specializing in the language in question. Interviews, as well as other similar texts (e.g. necrologies) are not subject to anonymous reviews, but the Editorial Board may still suggest appropriate changes.

All submissions should be sent in Microsoft Word format to vesnik@ius.bg.ac.rs, or submitted online through our website. If illustrations, tables or non-standard fonts are needed, they should be included as separate files. Originals of translated texts can also be sent as PDFs.

Video abstracts for papers or recorded live interviews are also acceptable and will be published on the journal’s social media profiles (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram etc.) once the issue they are related to is published online. Sending a video abstract or interview does not eliminate the author’s obligation to send a written abstract and keywords, or the transcript of the interview. (If the interview is conducted in a language other than English or Serbian, a translation of the transcript to either of those languages is also required.) Videos and other large files can be sent over free file-sharing services (e.g. WeTransfer, FileMail) together with, or soon after the textual submission.

Deadlines for submissions are the 30^th of April for the first issue and the 31^st of October for the second. Authors will be notified when their submission is received.

Authors are obliged to follow international academic and ethical standards in the writing of their papers. By submitting a paper for publication, every author guarantees that the paper contains no copyright infraction, plagiarism or ethical misconduct, as well as that the paper has not been previously published, accepted for publication nor is under consideration for publication elsewhere, and that any work in progress versions will be removed or replaced with a link to the version published in the HLH if the paper is accepted for publication.

Authors will retain the copyright in their work. It is, however, a condition of publication that authors transfer to the Herald of Legal History the non-exclusive right to publish the paper, to be cited as its original publisher in case of reuse, to reproduce, to make available to the public, and to distribute it in all forms and media. The published papers will be distributed under the „Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)“ license.

2. Formatting and Writing Style

Papers should be written using the Times New Roman font, size 12. Texts in Serbian should be written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Texts in English can use either British or American English, but one must be used consistently throughout the paper.

Latin and other foreign words and phrases, as well as internet addresses should be written in verso (italic), if available for the script in question. For languages that do not use the Latin or Cyrillic alphabet (e.g. Greek), please use a font of a similar size and include the font with your paper.

Foreign names mentioned in the text that use a script or transliteration different than the one the paper is written in should be given in the original in parentheses (and in verso) when they first appear in the text. In subsequent mentions, only the transliterated name should be used.

Example: As Igor Medvedev (Игорь Медведев) points out…

When quotations translated from other languages are given, the original should also be provided if possible, either in the main text or in a footnote, depending on the quotation’s importance. And vice versa – translations should be provided for all quotations given in any language other than the one the paper is written in. An exception to this are widely known Latin words and phrases, such as mutatis mutandis, de iure, a fortiori, et cetera.

There is no minimum or maximum length for submissions, but the reviewers may still suggest expanding or shortening a section of the paper based on its relevance for the subject.

Authors are free to write either in first person singular, first person plural or in a completely neutral style, but the same style should be used consistently throughout the paper.

The author's first and last name, initials of the middle name(s), and academic title should be placed in the upper left corner. The last name should be capitalized; the order common in the author’s native language can be used. The institution of study and/or employment, study level, or other affiliation and position, as well as the author’s email address should be given in a footnote indicated by an asterisk. The authors may also include, in the same footnote, links to their profiles on academic websites – the site of the institution where they are employed, an academic network such as ResearchGate, Orcid, Academia.edu, etc.

In order to ensure your paper's anonymity, please do not include your name anywhere except the title page. If you are referring to your other published works, please treat them as you would any other author’s, without singling them out as your own.

If the article is a part of a seminary paper, master or doctoral thesis, if it is the result of research within a scientific project, or it has been presented at a conference, this information should be indicated with as much detail as possible in the same footnote with the author's affiliation, in the next paragraph.

For articles (unlike other types of submissions), an abstract 100–150 words long should be included, together with 3–5 keywords suitable for indexing and online search purposes.

It is in the author’s interest that the title and key words reflect the content of the article as closely as possible. The entire paper, including the abstracts, shall be subjected to proofreading and peer review. The Editorial Board reserves the right to adapt texts to the journal’s style and format.

At the end of the paper, after the bibliography, the author’s name with the footnote, title of the paper, abstract (this time up to 500 words) and key words are submitted in the other language of the journal (Serbian if the paper is in English and vice versa). If you are unable to translate them yourself, please indicate so, and we will provide the translation.

The title should be centred, typed in capital letters, font size 14. The subtitles should also be centred, typed in capital letters, font size 12 and numbered consecutively by Arabic numbers.

If the subtitle contains more than one part, they should also be designated with Arabic numbers, as follows: 1.1.  – with lowercase letters in recto, font 12, 1.1.1. – with lowercase letters in verso, font 12, etc.

Authors of articles (and book reviews, if sources other than the reviewed book are quoted) are obliged to submit a bibliography of cited references, font 11, at the end of the article. The list should be divided into primary sources (historical and legal sources) and secondary sources (literature), both listed in alphabetic order by the authors' last names. Sources without (known) authors should be listed before those with authors, in alphabetic order by title.

Translations should include a short introduction which should outline in basic terms, for primary sources, the nature, significance and the context in which the translated text was created, and, for scholarly articles, the basic information about the author and the significance of the translated text. The introduction should be in the language into which the text was translated, and, as a rule, should not exceed one page in length.

In interviews, both the interviewee’s and the interviewer’s full name should be used before each individual’s first line, and initials should be used afterwards. Interviews should include a short introduction giving biographical information about the interviewee.

For references in articles and book reviews, please refer to the reference style guide below. References in translated articles should remain in the style used in the original text.       

3. Reference Style

 

1. Books: author’s first and last name (with other initials if present) in recto, title written in verso, publisher (if known) and place of publication in recto, year of publishing.

If the page number is specified, it should be written without any supplements (like p., pp., f., dd. or others).

The publisher’s location should not be followed by a comma.

Example: Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, University of Georgia Press, Georgia 1993, 26.

If a book has more than one edition, the number of the edition can be stated in superscript (for example: 1993²) if the author finds that information relevant.

Any reference to a footnote should be abbreviated and numbered after the page number.

Example: Alan Watson, Legal Transplants: An Approach to Comparative Law, University of Georgia Press, Georgia 1993, 26, fn. 15.

If a publication lists more than one place of publication, a maximum of three should be listed in the reference, separated by dashes.

Example: Jill D. Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge – New York – Melbourne 2004.

If there is more than one publisher, a maximum of three should be listed, separated by slashes.

Example: Slobodan Jovanović, Vlada Milana Obrenovića, knjiga I, BIGZ / Jugoslavijapublik / SKZ, Beograd 1990.

2. Journal articles: author’s first and last name (with other initials if present) in recto, article’s title in recto with quotation marks, name of the journal (law review or other periodical publication) in verso, volume and year of publication, page range without any supplements (as in the book citation). If the name of a journal is particularly long, and multiple articles published in it are cited, an abbreviation should be offered in parentheses when it is first mentioned and used later on.

Example: Sima Avramović, “Mixture of Legal Identities: Case of the Dutch (1838) and the Serbian Civil Code (1844)”, Annals of the Faculty of Law in Belgrade - Belgrade Law Review 4/2018, 13-37.

3. When an article from an edited volume is cited, the name and title are written in the same way as for journal articles, followed by the data about the volume in the same format as for books, and a page range, but the names of the editors are followed by an abbreviation in parentheses in the language of the book - “ed.” (or “eds.” for multiple editors) in English, “Hrsg.“ in German, etc.

Example: Éva Jakab, “Financial Transactions by Women in Puteoli”, Paul du Plessis (ed.), New Frontiers: Law and Society in the Roman World, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh 2013, 123-150.

4. If there is more than one author or editor of a book or article (three at most), their names should be separated by commas.

Example: Paul Cartledge, Paul Millett, Stephen Todd (eds.), Nomos: Essays in Athenian Law, Politics and Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge – New York – Melbourne 2002³.

If there are more than three authors or editors, only the first name should be cited, followed by abbreviation et alia (et al.) in verso.

Example: Michael A. Livingston et al., The Italian Legal System, Stanford Law Books, California 2015.

5. Repeated citations of a single work by the same author should include only the first letter of his or her name, last name and the number of the page.

Example: A. Watson, 65.

If two or more references to the same author are cited, the title should be abbreviated to up to three words (not counting prepositions, conjunctions or articles).

Example: A. Watson, Legal Transplants, 82. Or: S. Avramović, “Mixture of Legal Identities”, 25.

6. If more than one page is cited from a text and they are specified, they should be separated by a dash, followed by a period.

Example: G. Thür, 238–276.

If more than one page is cited from a text, but they are not specifically stated, the number which notes the first page should be followed with “etc.”

Example: G. Thür, 244 etc.

7. If the same page of the same source was cited in the preceding footnote, the Latin abbreviation for Ibidem should be used, in verso, followed by a period.

Example: Ibid.

If the same source (but not the same page) was cited in the preceding footnote, the Latin abbreviation for Ibidem should be used, in verso, followed by the page number and a period.

Example: Ibid., 69.

8. Pre-modern legal sources that have been published should be cited according to their modern-day editions, like any other book. In case of sources with a standardized citation system (e.g. the Corpus Iuris Civilis, the Bible) the standard abbreviations should be used.

9. Statutes and other regulations published in modern-day official publications should be provided with a complete title in recto, followed by the name of the publication (e.g. official gazette) in verso, and then the number (volume) and year of publication in recto. In case of repeated citations, an acronym should be provided on the first mention of a given statute or other regulation.

Example: Ustav Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca od 28. juna 1921. godine, Službene novine Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca, godina III, br. 142/21.

If the statute has been changed and supplemented, numbers and years should be given in a successive order of publishing changes and additions.

Example: Zakon o osnovama sistema vaspitanja i obrazovanja, Službeni glasnik RS, br. 62/03, 64/03, 58/04 i 62/04.

10. Articles of the cited statutes and regulations should be denoted as follows:

Example: Article 5 (1); Articles 4–12.

The word “article” can be abbreviated to “art.”, and we advise authors referring to a large number of articles to do so.

11. Citation of modern court decisions should contain the most complete information possible (category and number of the decision, date of decision, the publication in which it was published).

12. Citation of unpublished sources (archive materials) should contain the title of the source document as precisely as possible, followed by the name of the archive in which it is kept, the name of the fonds, record group or collection, and the document signature number used by the archive in question (complete with the number of the fonds, folder etc.); in case of repeated use, an acronym or abbreviation can be provided on first mention.

13. Citations of web pages, websites or e-books should include the title of the text, source address (URL) in italic, and the date of the most recent access.

Example: European Commission for Democracy through Law, Opinion on the Constitution of Serbia, http://www.venice.coe.int/docs/2007/CDL- AD(2007)004-e.asp, last visited on 24.3.2020.