Submission Guidelines

We invite submissions in the form of short essays and commentary on contemporary developments or issues of persisting relevance that speak to the Aims and Scope of the Journal. We do not accept pieces that consist of purely doctrinal or legal analysis; submissions must dissect the issue using an interdisciplinary lens.

If you have a theme or an idea that you’d like to develop in an essay for the SLR Forum, please get in touch at sociolegalreviewforum@gmail.com. We will be glad to discuss your ideas over email and provide editorial feedback in order to arrive at a better understanding of whether they fit with the objectives of the Forum. However, if you have a fully fleshed out piece, we encourage you to submit it directly.

Please adhere to the following guidelines to make a submission for the Forum

  • We allow co-authorship of up to two authors.
  • All manuscripts must be submitted in the form of a word document by emailing them to sociolegalreviewforum@gmail.com. The subject-line of the email must correspond to the title of the submission.
  • All personal or institutional information identifying the author(s) must be removed from the manuscript before submission.
    Submissions must range between 800-2500 words
  • Please hyperlink all sources in the main text. Do not use footnotes or endnotes.

The Editorial Board is committed to reverting with editorial comments within two weeks of receiving the submission.

Conditions for Publication

Author(s) must be prepared to make necessary changes to their submission in response to editorial comments. The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject a manuscript at any stage of the review process, including after revisions have been made in response to editorial comments.

Please note that in the event that a contribution submitted to SLR has been submitted and accepted by any other Journal or online platform, the author must withdraw their submission from SLR. If SLR accepts the submission first, the author must withdraw it for consideration from all other Journals and online platforms. Failure to do so will lead to removal of the piece for consideration for publication in the SLR Forum. Please note that SLR Forum does not allow cross-posting of articles.

Open Access Policy

The Journal allows for immediate free access to the work and permits any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose. The full text of all content is available on our website with no embargo period or requirement for users to register to read content. The print version of the Journal is available for a reasonable charge.

Copyright and Licensing Policy

Authors contributing to the Socio-Legal Review (‘SLR’) retain the copyright to their articles. They agree to publish their article with SLR under a Creative Commons License CC BY-NC 4.0. The terms of this license permit third parties to copy, redistribute, adapt, transform, and build on the article for non-commercial purposes.

AI Policy | 07.07.2026

This policy will be updated as needed to respond to the dynamic nature of generative AI and its interactions with research and writing.

A. AUTHORS
We review each article to assess whether it is original, rigorously researched, and retains the human authorial voice. Any use of AI should not undermine these standards and must be limited to a minor, assistive role.

Below is an illustrative guide on what we see as permissible or not when it comes to AI use. This guide applies to all stages of a manuscript.

AI tools may be used only in a limited, assistive capacity to:
● Correct grammar, spelling, or punctuation.
● Make minor language improvements.
● Format citations.
● Support preliminary and exploratory searches (only akin to a search engine).
● For research, AI must be used only in an assistive capacity; substantive analysis must be author-led.

All AI-assisted outputs must be carefully reviewed by the author, who remains responsible for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the work.

AI tools must not be used to:
● Rewrite any part of the article.
● Generate any part of the article.
● Generate or shape research questions, hypotheses, or arguments.
● Convert the author’s notes into an article.
● Synthesise or produce literature review.
● Add citations to the article not actually reviewed by the author.

This list is not exhaustive.

Disclosure Statement
Authors must include an AI disclosure statement as the first page of the article submitted. The review process will not begin without the statement. The disclosure statement must (i) identify any AI tools used (including those that are AI-assisted, like Grammarly) in research, writing, and editing; (ii) specify in detail what AI was used for; and (iii) confirm that all AI-assisted outputs were reviewed and revised by the author.

The blog reserves the right to decide on publication based on whether the disclosed AI usage meets its academic publication standards. Disclosure statements will also be shared with peer reviewers.

AI disclosure statements will be requested from all authors, irrespective of the stage of the manuscript.

False AI statements will be considered violative of academic ethics and will result in immediate disqualification of the article.

A Note on Editorial Support
We review manuscripts to primarily assess the originality and rigour of the argument. The Editorial Board, with the Faculty Board’s advice, will guide the author through the peer reviewer recommendations and revisions. They will also assist with structural editing, language editing, and proofreading to publish the best possible version of the manuscript.

B. EDITORS AND PEER REVIEWERS

Editors and peer reviewers must not upload any part of an unpublished manuscript to an AI tool/software.

Peer reviewers are required to sign a declaration that the review was written entirely by the reviewer and no part of the manuscript was uploaded to or processed by any AI tool.

Editors and peer reviewers may use AI tools to:
● Do exploratory searches to look for secondary material to understand a concept or field (only akin to a search engine).
● Seek assistance on matters related to grammar, vocabulary, or syntax without uploading any part of a manuscript to an AI platform.
All outputs must be reviewed and verified by editors/peer reviewers.

Editors and peer reviewers shall not use AI tools to:
● Outsource editorial judgement
● Generate peer reviews/editorial reports